


The Contractor

by Jacket_Simp



Series: The Contractor [1]
Category: Hotline Miami (Video Games), PAYDAY (Video Games)
Genre: Bandaging, Bank, Blood, Breaking and Entering, Broken Bones, Choking, Drugs, Explosions, Explosives, Fighting, Gen, Gentle, Grenades, Gun Fire, Guns, Heist, Kissing, Loner, Mel Brooks - Freeform, Nightclub, Other, Pain, Pain Killers, Payday 2, Questioning, Recovery, Romance, Self-Insertish, Smoking, Sneaking, Stabbing, Strangling, Survival, Theft, Torture, Training, Violence, Wounds, because why the fuck not at this point, binding, don't you get ideas that's in the other fic, grenade, heisting happened finally, here's your training montage, high, i'll add more tags as we go on, knife, not in the sexy way, pain meds, stealth - Freeform, zip-tie
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:02:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 28
Words: 76,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25931050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jacket_Simp/pseuds/Jacket_Simp
Summary: You're a contractor hired for a strangely well paying job, while you have a good plan things go wrong when the payday gang shows up to heist the vault you're already stealing from.
Relationships: Jacket/Reader
Series: The Contractor [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1916989
Comments: 55
Kudos: 50





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is going to be part of a series, I'm half way through chapter 2 rn. This is entirely self-indulgent and fun so don't expect anything I make to be like super high quality or special.

You grew up in a setting that fostered your specialized skill set, you’re an infiltration and theft expert. Capable of picking locks, hacking some smaller electronics, cracking safes, scaling and breaking into buildings, planting bugs and all undetected of course. Today you’re on a simple task, break into a bank at night and steal the contents of a specific safety deposit box. The client is pretty new to this area but it’s not a big deal, everyone buys their first illegal favor somewhere. 

First step was scoping the building out, you took a good bit of time early in the morning to look around when people were groggy and less likely to notice you. Using a hidden camera in your coat you snapped pics of camera positions and the general layout. The next thing you did was pull some city records for blueprints of the building, you had a contact so that was your early afternoon. The rest of the afternoon was spent pouring over the blueprints and approximating where the cameras would be based on the layout of the open customer areas. It wasn’t a big bank, but you know it has a big vault so it at least has some good security.

You set out that night parking a car about 2 blocks away then walking to the building, as you walk you do a quick check over. Bag, mask, gloves, lockpicking tools, zip ties, gun, knives, small hacking kit, ecm jammer, you’re ready. You take a deep breath and exhale through pursed lips and make your way to a blind spot on an outer camera. You don your mask, it’s simple wooden and painted black. You pull the hood up over your head and quickly pick the lock on the side door next to the camera then dip in quietly. The section you moved into luckily is quiet so you creep around the outer hallways keeping away from the lobby. 

Finally you manage to spot a security guard and creep up on him, he goes to turn around and you go right for the throat pinning him to the wall by your arm until he passes out. You tie him up just in case and drag him under a nearby desk and grab his key card and work your way towards the stairs down. You plant an ecm jammer nearby and knock the stair camera out and head down using the key card to slip in.

You can see the vault in front of you but you have to get into the security room to open it, that’s mostly what the key card is for. You use the key card to open the door, you hear, “Back already Jeff?” as the security guard turns to you but as he realizes you’re not who he expected you check him into his own desk. While he’s still dazed momentarily you grab him by his head and slam it into the wall and hit the button to open the vault. You tie him up while he’s unconscious for the time being and head out. 

The door slowly swings open and you walk in beginning to count boxes looking for the one you need. You find it pretty quickly and begin picking the lock, it’s a little tougher than usual but you know what you’re doing so it’s not a big deal. As you’re about to finish the lock you hear the alarms go off, did a guard find them? You don’t have time for this, you finish the lock and open the box only to find a small wooden box within’. The directions require you not to look inside so you don’t bother to unlock it and just stow it into your bag and step out. You look into the security room and the guard is still out, who set off the alarm?

You go up to the cameras and start clicking through and see a group of people setting C4 on the door. You duck under the desk with the unconscious guard and wait for the blast then hear people run into the next room. “Hey, looks like the vault’s already open. Think someone beat us to it?”, he says. “Might’ve, stay on your guard. Joy! Hoxton! Watch the door for police and any other thieves.” one responds. You hear the two of them move over next to the door and just barely peek over the desk and look at the camera feed. Clown masks, it’s the payday gang and you absolutely look conspicuous. 

You start going over what you know, there’s one entry point into this area and that’s the door they’re guarding. They both have assault rifles and body armor plus the cops are coming, you have a silenced pistol and a gun. There’s a vent nearby but it’s in plain sight and they’d see you if you were trying to get it open. As you’re going over your thoughts you hear someone coming towards the room, you shuffle further under the desk and listen closely. You hear them enter, heavier footfalls meaning boots. They start to move around the room, looking at the shelves and walls when they stop in front of where you slammed him into the wall. You realize you knocked things off the wall when you hit him and now he knows where you’ve been. 

You hold your breath trying to stay as quiet as possible but he knows and looks under the desk, initially seeing the guard then spotting you. “Come out, now!” you hear a gruff older voice. You slowly work your way out and make sure to put your hands up. He pushes his rifle against your back and grabs the bag off of you and looks in it only seeing the box. 

“I was just here for a job, if you want you can trade it into my client. I don’t have a death wish so you can collect the money too just let me go please.”, you try to explain yourself as quickly as possible. He looks up at you and goes, “Oh yeah? Who’s your client?” He looks over the box with one hand for a moment. “It’s Vauban.”, you respond. He side eyes you for a moment, “Hey Hoxton! I found our thief, can we talk for a moment? Joy, come keep an eye on her.” He walks out of the room as Joy joins you instead while you watch he and the guy who was guarding the doorway talk for a moment. 

They both come back in looking at one another and the guy he called Hoxton says, “Come on, we’re letting you go however before you leave.”, he pulls your mask off and takes a picture of you. “Just in case we need to find you, otherwise it’s your damn lucky day. Hurry before the cops show up.” He pushes you towards the door and you break into a sprint as soon as you can. You can only hope they put in a good word with him for you but you need to get out of this area now. You bolt out of the building and hear the swats showing up as you dip into the alley nearby. 

You manage to get to your car and get in seeing more cops speeding by on the main roads. You’d better hurry before they start closing off roads, you start the car and make a break through the back roads and work your way to your little safehouse. Third floor of this garbage apartment complex, you crack the door and come in. You decide it’s best to get some rest for the night, the last thing you remember is laying down before you wake up in the afternoon.  
You get up, get “breakfast” and check in on your computer for any messages and notice one from Vauban. He’s pleased to know things went well, and that he got his package. In fact he’s so pleased he got his package as expected he’s got another job for you immediately. He wants you to infiltrate a nearby gang, he gives you an address and tells you to give them a song and dance about how they’re being targeted. That you will gladly work with them and then use that to gather information on them and send it back to him. You are a little hesitant but you agree, you need the money after losing the last mission and figure how bad can it be? 

After breakfast and accepting you pack things up, you figure you might as well do a bit of recon on this one before you go in. You pack up and head downstairs and back to your car, this had better be worth it. After a short drive later and parking your car a few blocks away you walk to the location and take a look at it. It’s a laundromat, a little on the nose don’t you think? You make your way into the quiet building across the street and chill out at a window. Before you begin spying you decide to do some digging on Vauban, you’re not the first he’s hired for sure but he’s still really new to the scene. All jobs within the last 2 months only, overpaid too. He doesn’t know the price of work or goods, something feels off about this.

You turn your focus on the building, watching for movement and while you can see vaguely in the windows movement you can’t tell who’s there and what’s going on. You continue to watch for a few hours when you spot a few people leave for a bit to move some stuff into the building from a nearby vehicle. You listen quietly to see if you can hear anything and you hear one of the voices from the heist last night. It’s the one who was wearing boots, of course it’s the fucking payday gang. You’re right, something isn’t right about this and of course this is just your luck.


	2. Taking a Chance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You decide to take a gamble on your next move and be direct. Will it pay off?

You’ve been mulling it over all day and doing some digging, something about Vauban doesn’t sit right with you. But you have a plan, it’s not a great plan but it’s a plan. You ditch every weapon except for a single knife stowed in a sleeve and make your way up to the entrance. No hood, no mask, no weapons just you and a bag full of encrypted information. You open the front door and hop the counter to the door into the back, deep breath, exhale through pursed lips and open the door and raise your hands. 

Two of them were at the entrance already, “I fucking told you they’d follow us. Especially after last night.” It was the voice of the boot man again. “Well? What do you have to say for yourself, thief?”, replied the one he called Hoxton from last night. Before you can answer the boot man cuts in, “We should just kill them and get it over with.” 

“I wouldn’t if I were you.” You respond quickly.

“Oh? And what do you have?”

“Fucking information. I didn’t come and find you on purpose! Someone hired me and gave me your exact fucking address!”, you get loud and angry for a moment. You’re not in a mood to deal with this.

“Alright, I’m listening.” Hoxton replies. Rust goes to interject again only for Hoxton to hold his hand up to shush him.

“I was told to come here, someone is targeting you and hired me to literally infiltrate your gang and gather intel from you. I’m not stupid so I’m telling you the truth but I need to speak to whoever is in charge. There’s way more going on than just someone hired me to be an informant.”, you get things out as clearly as you can. You see Hoxton mull it over for a moment.

“You’re not really going to believe them are you?”, Rust responds. Hoxton pulls comms to someone for a moment. “Yeah, that thief is here. They say they didn’t follow us, but they also said they know something important. They want to talk to you.” 

There’s a moment of awkward silence, then Hoxton says, “Got it. Rust, we’re taking them up to the office to talk to him. Worst case scenario they don’t look armed if they try anything we just kill ‘em. Unless you’re afraid of one unarmed person.”

Rust laughs for a moment, they zip tie you and then push you towards the stairs. You can see a number of the other payday gang members hanging around, they had all been expecting either you or a fight from the look of it. You feel your anxiety spike realizing that if you’d been wrong about your assumption they’d want to talk you’d probably be full of holes right now. You take a deep breath, exhale through pursed lips and follow Hoxton and Rust’s directions up into an office on the second floor. 

They push you down into a chair and set up comms to someone you can’t see and are met with the voice of a man..

“Hello.”

“Hello, my name is y/n.”, you respond.

The voice laughs, “Well isn’t that a pleasant greeting considering the circumstances. They said you know something we should know.”

“I’ll gladly tell you but you have to make a promise to me. Protec-” You get cut off by Rust.

“You’re not really in a position to negotiate, kid!” 

“True, but after I tell you everything you’ll understand why I’m making these demands.”

“Let them speak Rust, time could be important here but I would like to know why you think you can bargain.”, you hear the other man's voice grow more serious. 

“I want protection, because I’m pretty sure the person who hired me to literally infiltrate your gang by telling you you’re being targeted will want me dead at the end of the day. I was hired by Vauban, he’s only gotten work within the last two months. The kicker? I got in contact with a few previous clients, three of which he called via phone and two were met with a male voice and one with a female voice.”, you say this with confidence.

“Yeah, we looked into him too. He hired us for last night's little bank heist at the same time as he hired you to jump the same vault. I don’t know if you know but the first two people who worked under him have gone missing and most likely the next few will go missing too.”, Baine responds.

“He, what?”, You didn’t know this, he does want you dead. “Either way I used a few favors and figured out some accounts he’s using. They’re offshore accounts tied to a major senator.” 

“I’m listening…”

“If he’s got access to accounts owned by a senator he likely has friends in high places who might turn a blind eye to his behavior. He doesn’t want the government involved, he wants us dead in his own special way. However he knows he can’t face you guys head on, you’re kind of an unstoppable force. I won’t turn against you because I know what you can do to me. I’m an infiltration expert but I’m sure you already know that, and I don’t want to die. Let me work for you even if it means I have to stay under constant scrutiny or am watched like a hawk just in case. The enemy of my enemy is my friend after all.” 

“Rust, take them out of here. We need to talk.”  
They drag you and your chair out, call that girl from before named Joy and another girl named Sydney to watch you. Though you’re not in the room you can hear them debating and Rust is for sure the loudest. “So uh, is he always this angry?”, you say jokingly looking up at them. Joy responds with, “Yeah, he’s just like that.” You look to Sydney who is paying more attention to what’s going on inside the room.

After a solid 10 minutes of sitting mostly in silence Rust storms out of the room and down stairs. Hoxton walks out, “You two, go do whatever. You? Come with me.” He cuts you loose and you follow him downstairs. “We haven’t figured out where to put you yet but you’re staying. Baine thinks you’re an asset, I agree. Welcome to your new home for a while.”

“Thanks.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I ended up rolling so many Jacket fic related ideas into this fic because I want them to be part of this. Please help me, I'm lost in this fics creation. It's fun.


	3. The Test

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's time to get tested, will you succeed?

The next day you, Hoxton, Joy and Sydney make your way to your safehouse. You pick up important stuff like computer equipment, clothes etc. and pack it up. Only the essential though, nothing else, you and Joy take extra care to go over as much stuff as you can to make sure they haven’t bugged any of your things. You do find one tracking device stowed on one of your tool sets and that tells you what you already know. They know where your safehouse is and they don’t trust you. 

Hoxton was on look out but comes into the apartment as you guys are finishing up, “We have a place for you when we get back, we’ll move your stuff into your room but when we get back you need to meet with Baine. We want to discuss with you where things are going next and what you can do.”

“Got it.”, you respond. It’s a little sad to leave this tiny apartment, but right now staying alive is much more important. The ride back was quiet, you figure everyone must’ve had a meeting this morning and nobody trusts you but you expected this.

You head straight up stairs with Hoxton to the office again where Rust, Dallas and a computer for Baine are. 

“Hope you slept well, we want to test you today.”, Baine says.

“Alright, what do you need?”, you reply.

“Well, we’ve been going over your history and previous work.”, Dallas says. “At least what we can track, you’re definitely good at hiding your ass, we'll give you that.”

“Now for you to put your money where your mouth is. Rust and the others are going to hit a bank today, however we need the keys to the vault. Pick them off the bank manager and pass them on to the entering heisters then head straight back here. We’ll have someone pick you up, don’t worry bout that.”, Baine says.

“We’re going to push forward even after you know that he’s watching?”, you ask.

“Yeah, make him think he hasn’t shaken us and we think we’re unstoppable. We want him to make a move so we can see what he’s up to. Additionally we want you to send him bad information. He doesn’t know quite yet you’ve turned on him, so I’ve got a few files for you. Send them to him when you get back and we should be able to potentially figure out something about him.”, Baine continues.

“By the way, your room is up near Tony’s. It’s right at the top of the stairs, it’s not much but it’s still better than sleeping on a couch.”, Hoxton adds. “Rust’ll take you to the location, and fill you in before sending you in. But someone else will pick you up in the same car, don’t worry too much about it. As long as you’re on our side you have nothing to fear.”  
You look at Rust for a moment and he glares at you. “Well then, let’s get going.” you say. Rust walks out of the room immediately without saying so much as a word to you.

“You might want to follow him, he’s not in a great mood.”, Hoxton says and you scurry off to follow him down. 

You get into the car without him so much as saying a word, he starts the car and you can feel exactly how tense everything is. After a few minutes he finally breaks the silence, “I don’t trust you. The only reason I’m not throwing you out of this car at high speed on this fucking interstate is because I trust Baine too much. So I’m going to challenge you, prove me fucking wrong. If you prove me right I promise you won’t die, but you’ll wish you had. Do you understand me?”

“Uh, yeah.”, you reply. 

“Good, glad we’re on the same page. Don’t fuck this up and I won’t fuck you up.”

The car ride strangely got less tense, he just threatened you but somehow you feel better knowing just how much he hates your guts. You take a deep breath, exhale through pursed lips and look over the bank info. You focus hard on the picture of the bank manager and get ready to be on the lookout. 

He drops you off a few blocks away and you make your way to the bank. You step in, civ clothes on and easily go undetected. Nobody knows to look out for you, but they know to look out for the payday gang. You spot the bank manager leaving his office, and work your way through over to where it is. You spot his keys on the desk through the glass, easy enough. You walk in and quickly slide the keys off the desk and into your coat. As you leave his office a guard stops you, “Hey, what were you doing in there?”

You put on your thickest southern accent, “I’m so sorry, I wanted to talk to the bank manager and ask about the rates here.”

“If you need to do that, make an appointment at the front or call ahead.”, he then says.

“Oh, okay. I’m from out of town and needed a new bank. Thanks so much for the information.” You smile and wave as you head over to talk to a teller and ask for information on the bank and its rates. She passes you a few pamphlets and says to call if you have any more questions, you thank her and make your way out of the bank and toss the pamphlets in the trash. 

You pass by the parking lot and pass the keys through the chain link fence to Rust and keep walking towards the car. You didn’t recognize most of the people in the heisting group, Joy for sure but the other two you didn’t know yet. At the car waiting for you was Hoxton, he laughs upon seeing you. “Rust owes me a beer then I see, he figured you’d bolt immediately.” 

“Yeah well, I don’t particularly fancy dyin’ y’know?” You still had your southern accent up and realized it in that moment and covered your mouth.

“Oh? That’s a new accent.”, Hoxton laughs again as you get into the car. Deep breath, out through pursed lips.

“It’s just a bit I do when I need someone to think I’m harmless. Let’s go before the swats start closing streets.”, you respond admittedly a little embarrassed and he drives you home. Hoxton’s a bit more talkative, he spends the ride going over what they generally do during these kinds of heists. Drill the vault, taking hostages, all dirty loud work. But it goes much smoother when you consider the gears in the background nobody sees, maybe the work here isn’t so bad.

Back at the safehouse you make your way back up and in front of the two of them send the bad data to Vauban. You can see on your end he received it, opened it and then no response. The worm in the files kicks up suddenly and you can tell whoever opened the files is very close by. You look at Hoxton and both nod then hear Baine finally chime in, “Go get some people, check in on this. If they’re this close ping wise that means they’re in a nearby building staking us out. You did that when you first came here too didn’t you? Which building did you use?” 

“The one across the street, it had multiple floors which made a great vantage point but there’s a couple buildings like that. That one was just the quietest and I figured nobody would notice an extra tenant.”, you reply.

“Then start there, Hoxton grab whoever you can and sweep. You’re staying here with me, have someone watch the office door. I want to talk to them alone.”, Hoxton leaves at Baine’s orders and you see someone come up and stand next to the door but you’re not sure who it is.

“So, there’s a few reasons I want you here. The first is to throw them off the thought that you’re some sort of triple agent, the second is to bring some security so they know you aren’t going to randomly turn on them while they work. The last? To tell you I trust you and that I did some digging. You’re not the only one with favors y’know.”, he says.

You laugh for a moment, “Sounds like a threat honestly.”

“Well I did find some stuff that I don’t think you expected, but it’s very hard to get to. I won’t give anything away to anyone else, the important part of what you hid were that you used to be part of another gang but I don’t know why you left.”

“I…”, you pause then take a deep breath, “I left that gang because they decided they didn’t want someone like me around anymore.”

“I see, I figured as much.”, you hear gun fire suddenly.

“Sounds like they found our friends, hopefully they can bring one in alive.”, Baine continues. 

“Speaking of, while I trust you I’ve decided to invest in a little insurance just in case. From here on out you’ve got a bit of a caretaker when you’re working. On one hand he’ll absolutely protect you but on the other hand if you did betray us he wouldn’t hesitate to kill you. As long as you really are on our side though, you have nothing to fear.”, he laughs at that last bit and you laugh too.

“Now I know that one IS a threat.”, you respond as the gunfire ceases. “Sounds like they’ll be back soon. Hey, before I forget Baine? Thank you for giving me a chance.”

“It’s not like you gave me much of a choice, but it is nice to have a dedicated contractor again.”

You hear yelling from downstairs and the sound of someone getting thrown into something and the fight immediately dies back down again. This is going to be a hell of an evening.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one was a little longer than usual and I'm already on the next chapter. :)


	4. Breaking and Entering

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You get your partner and gather evidence and info on this new gang.

You finally get let out of the room and take a look downstairs where they’re bringing in things from wherever they were hiding along with what’s left of who they found. They have two people zip tied down and the other three in body bags. Hoxton is already beating one of them for information while the other is recovering. It looks like he got knocked out cold a bit earlier, he was probably the one struggling you heard. You decide this isn’t your kind of work for right now and head to where your room is supposed to be. 

It’s basically a storage closet they cleaned out on the fly but you don’t need a lot of space to live. There’s a bit of furniture in it already, you move things around a bit until you get the right feeling. The room is longer than it is wide and you move the cot to the back pressed against the wall. Then you move the desk next to the bed and set up your computer stuff, along with what you brought is a note from Bain that gives you info on how to access the network legitimately. 

You look it over and set your computer up connection wise so you can access whatever Bain wants you to, put other things away. Some stuff stays in boxes because you have nowhere to put it but that’s alright. You sit down and get to poking around what you can, you don’t get identities or personal details but you take time to read about every member you can and what they can do. Meanwhile you can hear the yelling from downstairs that once in a while goes quiet, most likely to give them time to recuperate between questioning rounds. 

You take the time to check in on other contacts who worked for Vauban, hoping they get back to you or at least get your warning. As soon as the last message is sent out you start digging through what files Bain had on you. It’s mostly that you worked in another gang, you’ve been caught maybe twice and those arrest records don’t have your name with them but they definitely did when he found them. Bain is surprisingly polite for being a criminal mastermind running one of the meanest gangs to exist.

You check what Bain has on Vauban and it’s not much, he’s already digging through the Senator’s info so you poke the company his outer account is through. General illegal activity, tax evasion, commonly used by people in high seats of government. Nothing too weird so far, but you do know it has a parent company based in Russia you don’t recognize. You send that to Bain and start seeing what you can find but it’s not much, most stuff about this company isn’t easy to access from where you guys are.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

During the next few hours you and Bain hit a ton of dead ends, you hear the heist gang make it back to the safehouse and from the sound of it the torture finally stopped. Bain goes quiet for a bit most likely getting filled in on what they found out from their guys. You still haven’t found much and figure it’d be good to ask someone else about them. You leave and see Hoxton, Dallas, Wolf and Rust leaving the office. 

“Hey, come on. We’re having a meeting downstairs.”, Hoxton gestures at you and you follow.  
“So, we managed to bring two back alive. Neither of them wanted to talk, we figure they’re in deep debt with whoever hired them but we found one thing in common. All of them have the same tattoo, an image of a lion carrying a scroll in its mouth.”, Hoxton informs the group.

“So, what we need to do is track where they came from. We have the id’s of these fuckers, we’re starting there.”, Rust says. He starts passing out comms and hands one to you and gives you a glare then a small laugh. “Good luck.” 

Bain’s laptop was brought down here too, he takes a moment to address you guys. “We’re going to keep a few back at base considering how bold they’ve been, just in case. Those of you going out need to work together and stay quiet. We don’t want the cops called and if they’re already trying to clean up evidence we need you to bring people back alive. We need answers more than anything. If you need to kill to survive, that’s fine but try to bring at least something back. Try to document everything too if you can, we don’t know who this is and anything could be important. Stay safe clowns.”

You see everyone’s comms light up at once as everyone gets their info including you and your new watcher. You thought it’d be someone like Dragan or Sokol but no it was Jacket? You close your eyes and start going over what you read which admittedly wasn’t much. He doesn’t talk, he’s 5’11”, he killed a russian gang, he’s blonde with hazel eyes, he’s athletic in build, he used to live in Florida. 

As you finish recalling what little he had you get a tap on your shoulder and turn. He’s taller than you for sure, his face is calm and expressionless. He holds a hand out and you hear a cassette tape, “Hello, it is nice to meet you.” says the woman's voice. You shake his hand, “A pleasure to meet you too. I’m guessing you’re going to be accompanying me then.”, you respond. He nods and starts heading out, you follow him easily. 

You’re not sure what to talk to him about, if anything at all. You quietly get into the car with him and he starts it and drives off. After a few minutes you finally speak up, “I’m going to guess you’re going to be with me a lot from now on.” He nods in response. “Well, at least it’s not Rust babysitting me anymore. Did Bain fill you in?”, he nods again. You figure he’s not using the cassette player because he’s driving so you decide to stop asking questions. 

One awkward quiet car ride later and you’re met with an apartment building in a middle class part of town, weird for a gang member to be tied to some place like this. You both don your masks upon leaving the car.

He heads towards the front entrance and plays from his cassette again, “Please follow.” 

“Alright, you lead the way.”, you say following him.

The two of you make your way to the third floor apartments, something seems off and Jacket looks to be getting tense too.

“It’s too quiet, I don’t like this.”, you say. “I agree.” You count to get to the apartment and before starting anything listen at the door, nothing. Jacket leans against the wall next to you to keep watch as you begin picking the lock. The lock is simple, it takes you less than a minute easily, before you open the door you look up to him and he pulls out an smg. You pull out your pistol and open the door slowly, nothing so far. 

The apartment is a wreck and nobody’s been living in it from the look of it. It’s a staging area for packaging drugs, they were using his name to keep property from the look of it. All pills too, you examine a bottle full of small round whtie pills but find no labeling on it. You put it back and pick up a box instead labeled “Tramadol”, it’s pain meds. 

“Jacket, these are pain meds, if they’ve been taking their own product that might’ve been why torture was ineffective. But why would some random gang dude be so ride or die for a pill op?” He looks at you curiously for a moment, then turns to the door. You pull out a small camera and start snapping pictures and digging through stuff. 

This room is pretty bare outside of shelves of drugs and pill bottles, it’s an awful lot of drugs for one gang to have even as a supplier and it kinda rubs you the wrong way. You take a look into the bathroom and it’s been being used for more storage. The bedroom however has a few desks and a laptop, though it’s open it’s password protected so you take a moment to dig through the desks. You find a single notebook full of random letters and numbers but organized in a specific way, otherwise you don’t find much else. You nab the notebook, close the laptop and take it as well along with both a bottle and box of pills just in case.

You quietly make your way back over to Jacket and press your ear to the door, you can hear people moving just outside. “Son of a-” you mutter under your breath only for him to shush you in a motion. You head over to the nearby window and unlock it then peek out, no way to get down from here easily without putting you or Jacket at high risk. You look at him and he motions for you to come over and stay down.

He takes a step back and fires into the wall he was next to, firing through and hitting the guy on the other side who you hear cry out. The one on the other side of the door goes to kick in the door only for Jacket to fire into him as well. He beckons you to follow him and you stay low helping him shoot out a few more guys. “Hey, don’t forget we need to bring one back alive.” You grab Jacket’s arm and remind him but he doesn’t seem like he’s listening. 

Suddenly you get grabbed from behind, the first guy wasn’t done. You yell as he grabs you and pulls you back down onto the floor, Jacket turns and grabs him by the arm and with one swift swing breaks his arm with a sickening crack. He goes in to finish him and you grab him again, “Hey! We need one alive, the other guys we don’t have to give a shit about but he isn’t going to be much of a threat.” 

He finally turns and looks at you and drops the guy to the floor on his arm. He yells out in pain and you both ignore him. Jacket turns back towards the other guys and walks down the hallway to finish them. You zip-tie the guy, even with his broken arm. You hear the sickening crack and a few shots get fired as he finishes them off.

“You fucking bitch!”, the thug spits at you. You’re not in the mood for this and stomp the back of his head so he breaks his nose on the floor and turn to check on Jacket. He was on his way back when he watched you do that. You look away from him and go check on the other guy next to the door Jacket gunned down earlier on. Same tattoo, just like those other guys. They’re all the same gang, but we don’t even know this gang's name. Jacket picks up the beaten thug and carries him out with you, throwing him unceremoniously into the back of the car and you guys get in.

As Jacket starts driving you patch into Bain, “Hey guess what, we’ve got a live one.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Workin' on the next one, I had this one done I just felt like going back over it and fiddling with it a bit. Sorry I didn't post it sooner. :)


	5. Spinning Your Wheels

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You've returned to the safehouse with information and items, but what good are they with no answers?

You guys get back to the safehouse, remove the masks and throw this guy down on the safehouse floor. “I’ve brought you a present.”, plays from his cassette.

“Must be our lucky day, you’re not the only ones coming back with a live one.”, Bain says.

“Hopefully these guys will be a little easier than the last set.”, you say. “I also brought some stuff back.”

You begin unpacking everything you brought with you on a table nearby when the guy forces himself up and goes to rush you only to get clotheslined by Jacket. He hits the floor and yells out in pain again. Jacket walks over and squats down next to the guy, expressionless while making sure he can see the hammer in one hand. 

You start flipping through the notebook, “Do we have a code database by any chance?”

“Yup! We’ll get these scanned in so everyone can do their own research.”, Bain says, Clover comes over and you pass it to her.

“Yo.”, she takes it from you and keeps a stern look on her face.

By this point Wick and a few others have approached to make sure he stays subdued as you sit down and wait for everyone to come back. You watch Clover go upstairs to scan things in, you start to fiddle with the comms device you were handed earlier, looking it over properly since you have time. It’s a simple, cell phone like device you carry on your person that connects to a headset using probably its own signal. It’s a paired set meaning if you could get into it you might be able to change who and what it’s paired with if given enough time. It’s smooth on the outside however meaning there’s probably a device they have for getting into them to fix them.

When you look up you see Jacket hovering a bit, he was watching you intently as you were looking it over and fiddling with options. You didn’t even notice him come up on you actually. “Uh, can I help you?”, you ask.

He doesn’t respond but that doesn’t matter as you both turn away and watch Rust drag in a very bloodied and unconscious thug. Rust looks like he got into a nasty fist fight with this guy too and looks pretty beat up, blood dripping down his face. He drops the guy onto the floor next to the first guy and he heads over to sit down. 

“Fucking christ this guy put up a fight, keep an eye on him will ya?” He motions at Jacket to go over and watch him. “Yes Rust.”, the tape says calmly and he walks over to stand with Wick and a few others. You decide this isn’t really your scene and make your way upstairs quietly and slip into your room. 

You breathe a sigh of relief with your back to the door then start up your computer, you’re bathed in the soft light of the monitor and quickly start looking to see the scanned pages from the notebook. You see where they’re coming in on and open page 1 alongside a few cryptogram guides. You start going line by line quietly to yourself, taking notes on the side looking for patterns. Around when you mark off the first as an unlikely choice you hear a knock at the door, you look at it quietly for a moment then decide to get up. 

You open the door and Jacket is standing there quietly, covered in a little bit of new blood. “I’m going to guess Bain wants you to watch me?”, he pauses for a second then you hear, “Yes.”

“Bring a chair I guess and come on in.”, you say and he quickly gets one from nearby and comes in to sit and watch what you’re doing. “What do you know about code languages?”, he shrugs in response and you sit back down and continue working. He watches you intently as you go layer by layer, starting at the front and going back to the back of the book to start from there just in case it’s written backwards. After a while you check off the next one, this’ll probably be a long night and you can feel it. 

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The next day isn’t very fruitful either, you convene with Bain and a few others in the evening after a day of digging through code.

“We’re pretty sure at this point it’s a proprietary code and is going to require us to put our heads together, it doesn’t match anything we already have on record.”, Bain says. “Nothing those guys gave us was useful either meaning they’re just work and someone else knows this code too. Can you guys think of anything that stood out and might give us a clue to who their wrangler might have been?”

Everyone in the room stops to think quietly, you can see Clover with the notebook in front of her and open pouring over it as we all think about it. You can’t think of anything that stands out other than the boxes of drugs, “Perhaps the drugs are coming from a specific supplier, especially in that quantity. Maybe if we can track the supplier we can get at least something?”

“That’s been a rough road so far, the pharmacy these come from doesn’t seem to exist in any way and we can’t find an address.”, Hoxton says. 

“What about the laptop? How has Joy been doing on that?”, Clover asks.

“No good so far, it has a lock that if she gets it wrong it’ll self delete and while she’ll be able to salvage some data it might not be enough. She’s got to be extremely careful otherwise she might lose our best potential lead.”, Bain responds. “Rust? Anyone else noticeable around base recently? Any weird activity?”

Rust is leaned back in his chair and looks angry as usual, “Not a fucking thing so far, ‘been doing rounds and fuck all has happened since the other day. So far all I’ve learned is we’ve beat the shit out of a bunch of assholes, got nothing for it and have been on a wild fucking goose chase for the last two days.” He leans forward during his last bit to glare at the table.

“It’s not anyone’s fault we’re not getting anywhere, whoever heads this operation wants it to stay a secret. It’ll take some time to crack the code but we’ll get there, and I trust Joy since computers are her whole thing. Anyway, y/n have you gotten a response from Vauban?”, Bain changes subjects quickly.

“No, he’s gone radio silent. Perhaps he’s checking the false leads we gave him.”, you say. “It’ll take some time after all if he’s going through channels he’s not familiar with.”

“Or, you fucking tipped him off somehow with some secret codeword so he won’t talk to you until he needs you to act in his stead and fuck shit up here.”, Rust responds.

“Or he’s got a mole in the gang we don’t know about…”, Clover adds.

You go quiet at this point, you’re wondering if you know any code breakers but you can’t think of any who would still talk to you.

Bain ends the meeting, you’re all no closer to an answer and you’re frustrated. Nobody trusts you of course, you expected that but even with the whole payday gang jack all is getting done. Who the fuck is this guy?


	6. Easy Plan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You get to know Jacket it a little bit better and help out with another heist.

Your only solace over the next day of code breaking work is Jacket keeping an eye on you, it was equal parts comforting and intimidating and you’re not sure which it was supposed to be. 

“Do you like working for the gang?”

“Yes.”

“Is the work hard?”

“Yes.”, this time he rewinds the cassette, “I like it.”

Initially your conversations are simple as you focus on the code, but the longer it goes on the more you lose focus. “Is Bain good to you?”

“Yes.”

“... Do you have your own room like everyone else?”

“Yes.”, he smiles a little at this and you become curious immediately.

“Can I check it out?”, he stands up after you ask and you do too. He gestures for you to follow him and head out, taking a look around you see the office is full of exhausted gang members going over what they can. As you come down the stairs you turn to your left and see a group of people playing darts and bickering over who was best. You follow Jacket into the basement, down the concrete spiral stairs and around a corner. You see Dragan training and Sokol is spotting him from the look of it, near you are two doors one that’s basically a fenced off area and the other is closed and you can hear music from in the room. You take a moment to look down the other hallway spotting a vault door and hearing gun shots from the far end.

“Follow.”, you hear that cassette again and turn to Jacket and follow him into his room. It was more a fenced off section of the basement at the bottom of the stairs, the pillar for the stairs was in the center and he had a couch pressed against it. He has a work table in one corner with hanging storage for weapons and a set of unfamiliar masks hanging above it. The other corner has a tv and a game console, a NES from the look of it. His walls are covered in storage for cassette tapes, and most surfaces in his room are covered in tapes as well. You see some equipment for cutting audio for cassettes in fact on his work table, along with a few weapons of course. 

You take a quick peek at his tape collections and while a few are language learning tapes quite a few are albums you recognize and have listened to. You turn to him and smile, “Good taste I see.” As odd as his communication method is he’s definitely been the friendliest with you, though you’re pretty sure that’s because he sees you as no threat to him. You try to get your head out of that, this is the first time in a while you’ve felt even slightly relaxed and decide to use this time digging through his games collection.

He sits down on the couch behind you while you poke around his things for a few minutes and look up at him, “Sorry I’m barging in like this and digging through your things.” He shakes his head and you take that to mean not to worry. So you pick through his games to see if you find anything you want to play, most of his games are single player which is fair for the era of console but you find a few choice co-op games.

You specifically pick out River City Ransom and hold it up, he nods and you get things set up passing a controller to him. You choose to sit on the floor and take second player since it is his console and his room. You two boot up and start playing and it’s a good time, just two people against the world to save your girlfriends, who can resist?

Around the two hour mark you hear a small clang at the fencing, it’s Rust. “HEY, aren’t you two supposed to be working?” Jacket pauses the game, you start thinking up excuses rapidly. Jacket gets up as you’re still mulling over how to answer and walks up to Rust. He stares Rust down for a moment then turns to you, “Please follow.” You get up and follow Jacket who walks by Rust and you follow quickly. You can feel Rust glaring at you as you follow him back up the stairs and into your room to get back to working on the code.

The rest of the night is more quiet awkward code breaking, sharing notes with the others. Finally Bain calls it for the night, but mentions he’s got a heist lined up for tomorrow. You volunteer quickly and Bain responds just as quickly, he already planned for you to help out with it tomorrow. At least you were going to get some time not worrying about work.

He sends you a copy of the plans, it’s an easy bank heist where you have to stow supplies ahead of time without others noticing. All of course within a short time of the gang arriving, the hardest will be the thermite cans but you’re sure you can figure that out.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Your night was restless and stressful, chronic stress dreams definitely put you on edge for the day. Jacket drove you both to the bank, he was supposed to go in with you but knowing where you had to go he couldn’t follow you everywhere so you’d be solo for some sections. Your route was easy, come in with a gym bag pretending you’d just come in to check on things and were running late. The bag had all your necessary supplies in it to put in ahead of time. Say you had a meeting up stairs and head up, pick a keycard off of someone and use it to get into the server room and pop everything in where it needed to be, put the keycard back on that person and leave with Jacket waiting on the first floor for you.

You run over your plans with Jacket quickly while in the car, the route you’ve picked and the timing. He nods silently as he listens and seems to be paying close attention as well. As you approach the bank his demeanor changes to be more serious. You get that feeling again off him, he’s tensed up and his expression has changed in the same way he was with the thug and during the break in. You’re glad he’s taking this seriously, if something happens you’re going to need back up.

You arrive and wait a few minutes, you watch for the woman at the desk for the upstairs offices to walk off on a break and send Jacket in. He comes back out and writes down someone’s name for you. Shortly after you get the go ahead, the idea is to strike so quickly and smoothly nobody has time to find what you’ve done. You walk in with your big stupid gym bag and mention to the desk clerk you have a meeting up stairs, claim the name Foster and she lets you up.

You climb the stairs and spot the server room on your way up towards the offices, you pass a guard quietly and a few security cameras but nobody seems to notice anything out of the ordinary. You spot the bank manager's office where he’s on his computer and wait a moment for a guard doing rounds to pass. You feel weirdly uneasy, you haven’t been stopped once.

You watch the guards a bit and spot one with a keycard, you pretend to trip and bump into him. “Oh! I’m so sorry!”

He catches you, “Are you alright?” You lean into him a little harder and go, “Oh, I think I’m still a little exhausted from my workout. I’m so sorry!” While he’s steadying you, you quickly untag his keycard from him and slip it into a side part of the bag. 

“Are you going to be okay? Do you need anything?”, he looks very concerned. “Oh no, it’ll be okay. Just give me a minute to rest. I can’t put off this meeting anymore.” and sit down on a nearby bench for a moment of rest. He asks again and you tell him it’ll be fine, you’re just not used to working out so hard. 

He goes to continue his rounds and you check his keycard, it has the right clearances for sure. You work your way back around the second floor to the server room and slip in quietly, you crack the copier open and toss in the drill in the top half. You crouch down and start stowing the thermite into the bottom half when you hear the door open. The gun is still in the bag and you turn to see a group of guards entering the room with their guns drawn.

“STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING AND PUT YOUR HANDS UP!”, one of them orders. You can’t get to your gun fast enough and you can’t survive that many bullets at once. You do as they say and put your hands up, you haven’t turned to look at them yet though. “Hands behind your head!”, you follow their directions and one of them runs over to you and zip-ties your hands. Another runs over to start looking through your bag to see what you had and what you were doing. You felt your blood run cold, you’d been sold out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I might not be posting tomorrow because   
> A: the next chapter is turning out longer than I anticipated.  
> B: I have to DM my dnd game tomorrow and that makes the day a dnd all consuming thing.


	7. Hard Way Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things aren't going to plan at all.

You’re laying on the floor, this guy has a boot on your back and guns pointed at you. “Yeah, glad we got the tip off the other day, we caught ‘em before they did any damage. What do you want us to do with them?” You start breathing heavily, your ice cold turns to a burning anger. Had they been messing with you? This whole time? Is this how it ends? If it is, they're coming with me.

“Go tell Mr. Camber he can rest easy.”, one of them tells two others. They go to open the door back up to leave and you hear a shotgun and two people hit the floor. The other guy who has his foot on your back suddenly takes the second shot, it’s around this point in time the alarms go off. There’s two more shots and you see one fall dead next to you in a pool of his own blood and hear the second hit the floor in the corner of the room. Someone kneels down next to you, you hear a knife and you get cut loose. You hear “I’m here to help.” from the cassette player. You’ve never been so pleased to hear that, as you go to get up you hear more guards coming and another shot rings out at the doorway and you hear him start reloading it quickly before more arrive.

You look up at Jacket as you patch into Bain’s comms, you’d gone quiet for the entry just in case but things are about to go as loud as possible.

“The switch boards are lit up, are you guys okay in there?”

“Yeah, someone knew I was coming. We should finish this, I know you guys can deal with the cops. I’ll just hide somewhere and come with when you guys escape.”, you start repacking the drill and other stuff in the bag to bring with you back downstairs and pull out your gun.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m already here, we have all our shit here and they’re already pissed, plus I know you guys are right outside basically.”, Jacket fires into the doorway again blowing away a few more guards.

“Vauban might stick his neck out more if he thinks we’ve foiled his attempt at us too. Alright, guys move in you’re going in hot though be ready!”

You tap Jacket’s arm gently, “Hey, come on. We’re going to meet the others downstairs. I'm going to stay in cover if that’s okay with you.” He nods, dons his mask and checks the doorway, he hits his cassette for a moment, “Follow”. You proceed with him downstairs and meet up with Rust, Clover and Bodhi. You go to open the bag when Rust points his gun at you, “What the fuck did you do!?”

“Nothing! I got broadsided too, I’d probably be in a lot worse situation if it weren’t for Jacket. Now if you’ll excuse me we have work to do!”, you yell back at him for once. You’re not in a great mood to deal with his shit since right now you’re caught up in a heist. You pass Brodhi the drill quickly and he begins setting it up. “You sure you want to go through with this?”, he asks.

“I don’t have much of a choice do I? If we want Vauban we need to make him try harder. I’ve got the thermite, ammo and some medical stuff so just ask and I’ll pass you what I can.”, you say and quickly take cover at the metal detectors security console. 

“They and Bain have a point, whoever this is they’re a real bastard and they know too much. This might be our only chance to force him to take a risk and make a mistake.”, Clover says. “Just stay out of our way okay?”

You nod as you hear the first wave of cops start coming in and the discharge of many firearms and start thinking. They knew before you even knew the plan, so it has to be a leak coming from inside the safehouse. You look up really quickly and spot a sniper getting into position through the glass ceiling and take him out quickly. 

You get up on your knees and look at the security console, it’s a touch screen, you can get fingerprints off this easily. You tap the top corner of the screen so it lights up but doesn’t smudge the middle point where the touch screen keyboard is, bingo. You didn’t bring your usual bag with you, but you have an idea, you hop the security fence quickly and stay low running over to a nearby desk. 

“What are you doing?”, Bodhi shouts out.

“Don’t worry, I have an idea that might help us out a bit. Hang on.” This desk resident had left their purse here and you start digging through it and find what you needed almost immediately, some make up materials including eye shadow and a brush. You turn to make your way back only for a taser to drop down in front of you. You reach for your gun but before you can even touch it he takes a hit from a baseball bat, “Taser out of order.”

“Thanks Jacket!”, you use that moment to bolt back to the security stuff and quickly dust down the touch keyboard and find a series of fingerprints that overlap over certain buttons. It’s just a matter of guessing what word it is. 

“Smart thinking!”, Clover says. “Keep an eye on them, I’m going to go help Jacket and Rust fend off the first wave.” She hops the barrier and makes her way into the fray with them.

You turn to Bodhi who’s focusing on keeping an eye out for snipers and drop ins where you guys are specifically, “Yo, the letters are lvsegas, that mean anything to you?” He shrugs and shoots down a sniper through the ceiling, glass rains down on another section of the room.

You patch into Bain, “Hey! I figured out how to get into one of the security consoles, I need help. I can’t figure out the password but I have the letters. LVSEAG, got it?”

“Uh, Salvages?”, you put it in and get no return. 

“No dice!” 

“No wait! LAS VEGAS! Wishful thinking huh?”, you put it in and get in. 

“Fuckin’ genius bastard that’s it.”

“Wait, really? What can you do from there?”

“Uh, I can’t turn off their security but I can unlock security rooms in the back when we get into the deeper sections and use those. I also have their internal memos to security including one from two days ago stating a bank attempt was slated for today. We have a mole.”

“Damn, there might be a hack device with you. Use it to download and send me what you can from their system.” 

“Got it!”, you dig around the bag really quickly and find it in a side pocket, crack the panel of the console just enough and hook it up and transfer what you can. It’s not total system access but it’s better than nothing. You hear a loud shot ring out through the room and a bullet hit the wall next to Bodhi. You turn around and see a dude across the street, call his position out and then fire as best as you can from where you are. You see at least one shot connect followed by a second from another. “I took out the fucking sniper. You guys okay back there?”, Rust yells out.

“Yeah, we’ve got this on our end. We’ve also got access to a bunch of the back end security from the look of it.”, Bodhi responds.

“I heard, how’s the drill going?”

“It’s got about a minute and a half left, so get ready.”

You watch the device send the last few files and unplug it just in case you need it for later.

Bain comes in through comms suddenly, “I’ve got everything, but guys be careful there’s another assault coming in.”

“Got it, everyone fucking get back and get ready to hold, you too kid.”, Rust says and you see Jacket and Clover back up to where you guys are to fortify.

“Is there additional ammunition?”, you hear Jacket ask. 

“Yup.”, you respond and quickly pass everyone some ammo. “Anybody hurt and need something?”

“Nope, we seem good for now.”, Clover responds.

You hear the reinforcements start breaching the lobby and take a look at the timer, one minute. You take a deep breath, the first group of shields rounds the corner and you hear, “GRENADE!” from Rust as he lobs one into their group. After a few seconds you see the shields get blown down from just behind them, you and everyone else unload on the cops as they move in when a few shots ring out across the room and everyone ducks quickly. It’s more snipers, you guys have to coordinate to figure out where they are.

You peek over the console and spot one across the way, you hear Bodhi yell out where he sees another just barely. The two of you quickly pop out of cover and take shots at both of them, you both manage to hit your marks as another shot rings out. You watch Rust fire into the ceiling glass and the body of another sniper hits the marble floor.

Jacket pops back out of cover and immediately unloads on a few guys trying to push where you’re fortified, you see medics trying to move through the doorway behind them and fire at a few slowing down most and killing at least one. You reload as quickly as you can, Rust calls out a group popping down into your area. He and Clover unload into them quickly and start reloading. You hear, “I’ve brought you a present.” followed by the sound of glass breaking. You peek up after reloading and see the fire from a molotov and it does seem to have slowed their assault. 

You see another sniper set up on the roof and shoot him before he can get his aim, when you hear a loud grinding noise. “OH FOR FUCK’S SAKE!” Rust kicks the drill and it un jams suddenly, “Fucking piece of junk garbage. Bain, why can’t we buy a better drill?”

You hear Bain laugh followed by, “Ask Sokol why it gets stuck like that sometime, see how that goes.” Rust responds with a series of muttered insults and expletives, some you don’t even recognize.

The drill finally finishes and you hear the door open behind you and fire a few shots into the oncoming police. Jacket grabs you by the back of your shirt and pulls you up suddenly, “Please follow now!” You go with him and everyone else into the hallway behind the door, he holds back for a second and throws a molotov at the doorway to slow their following and rushes in with you. You fire a few shots to help clear the guards who were in the hallway as you run through as a group.

The vault is sunk in the floor so you’re going to need to go above it to get in, that's what the thermite’s for. Rust and Bodhi escort you back to where you need to drop the thermite and you pass it out to the two of them and they set it. You turn back and use the keycard from earlier to pop the security door, and hop into the chair in the office. You unlock the computer quickly and it’s all cameras, this is much more your speed. 

You pop comms back open, “I’ve got access to their cameras guys. They’re moving in from the Lobby, the swath of death you guys left is slowing them it turns out. The molotov has burned out by the way so be ready for when they get through.”

A few minutes pass, you calling out enemy movements and positions along with who or what is coming in, the four of them keeping them busy. Once in a while you look over at the thermite to see how it's doing, you’re not really sure how to gauge thermite timing to be fair. Clover doubles back after a bit to check in on the thermite as well when you see a smoke grenade land near her then hear a weird noise. 

You jump out of your chair and bolt for her ducking into the smoke, you can barely see a standing figure that isn’t her and you fire at the figure then hear him hit the ground. You hear Clover yell out from the ground and reach down and help her up. “What in the fuck was that?”

“That was a cloaker. They’re spec-ops or whatever but they’re not a big deal usually. Didn’t expect him to get the drop on me, thanks though!” Clover pats you on the shoulder and takes point in the hallway nearby. You reload your gun as you return to the desk and start calling out more movements.

A few more minutes pass when Bain patches in, “The thermite should be almost done by now. Get ready guys!” You breathe a sigh of relief knowing this is almost over and get away from the desk, you see everyone reconveign near the thermite as it finishes and you watch everyone else hop in first and hear some gun fire followed by, “Please follow.” and you hop down quickly. 

You see everyone beginning to bag money and get it ready near the entrance and you help out too. The door starts to open as you toss another bag over to Rust who tosses it at the door. Jacket and Bodhi who were already waiting nearby fire into the crowd of swat just outside. You nab the last bag to carry and follow the two of them burning through the crowd without a second thought. You guys reach the vent with ease and help out by being the last person in the throwing line to get everything out to the van. Jacket and Bodhi standing guard and once in a while you help fire into the groups as they move in.

Like a well oiled machine this takes almost no time at all, but now you guys need to make your way out. You pass out ammo really quick before checking with Bain, “Hey, any interesting chatter?”

“The upstairs security shutters got pulled down. You'll have to go around to the other stairway, okay?”

“I heard him, let’s get the fuck out of here.” Rust says and leads you guys on your way out. 

You guys make your way back up and out the doorway, you make your way across the lobby narrowly dodging fire while returning your own. You hear another molotov hit the doorway after you guys pass through it. You turn to Jacket, “Good thinking!” you shout over the chaos, he nods in response and you two keep running to try to catch back up with the others. 

He lets you pass him so he can keep an eye on you only for you to hear a crackle and a thunk from behind, you turn and see a taser has him. You go to fire but there’s a click, your heart sinks, you forgot to reload. You drop the gun and bolt for his baseball bat and pick it up off the floor as you pick up speed after the taser. You feel a momentary rush as you swing striking him in the head and following through into the wall. He lets go of the trigger and slides down the wall for a moment then falls over but you continue to hit him. Jacket gets up and walks over while you’re still beating him as blood pools under him, you lift up to swing down for an overhead strike when Jacket grabs you. You stop from the resistance, you’re breathing heavily for some reason. You bring your arms down and pass him back his baseball bat, he nods in response and gestures ahead. 

You both round the corner and find Clover there, “Are you guys okay? We realized you weren’t with us.”

“Yeah, just had a little incident.”, you respond.

“Taser no longer in working order!” Jacket adds and then heads over to help move bags.

“What he said, how do you guys do this so frequently?”, you take a moment to catch your breath and you hear Clover laugh.

“Easy, it’s because we do it so much. You’ll get used to it, especially now. No mask, real bold look y’know?” Clover jokes and heads over to help the others.

Your heart sinks, she’s right. Years of eluding detection all gone because of this bastard and his bullshit, you had no chance to even hide your identity either really. You take a deep breath and exhale then help move the last few bags and hop into the back of the van. Rust takes the driving position, Clover hops in the front seat and leaves you, Bodhi and Jacket in the back with all the money. The initial jolt of the getaway Van spooks you but you get used to the speed pretty quickly. 

You look down at yourself and see a good bit of blood from when you went after the taser, some of it was just on the baseball bat and transferred. You try to wipe it off your hands for a moment then look up and see Jacket watching you and look away. You hear Rust and Clover start swearing loudly, Rust suddenly takes a sharp turn and you guys get shaken around a bit. 

“These guys won’t fucking leave us alone. JACKET! BODHI! Fucking get them off us!”, Rust yells back at them then buckles down and focuses hard on driving.

You watch Jacket crack a box full of grenades and pull a few out, he opens the back doors and throws a few out the back. Bodhi preps an assault rifle and you check yourself when you realize you left your gun behind. Bodhi sees you patting yourself down and checking the bag and he passes you his pistol. “Here, see if you can knock out the tires. If you manage to hit a driver though I’ll buy you a beer.”, he chuckles at that and you take the gun. It isn’t silenced but it’s a pistol and you can work with that. You lay flat to prepare to hold your aim and to stay out of the main firing zones as you hear the grenades go off. The guy in the car following you guys evades them expertly, as a barrage of fire from you and Bodhi aim for his tires. He flats and pulls over very suddenly and nearly flips his car but there’s a whole swarm following you guys. 

You guys get ready for the next round of fire as Jacket sets a few more grenades off, one in his little swarm hits one car blowing it out and causing it to hit one behind it removing them from the chase. You and Bodhi finish getting reloaded and blow out a few more tires but there’s still a ton left, this is gonna need a bit more. You roll onto your back to reach for more ammo as Jacket looks down, he’s got one grenade left and opts to pulls out a pistol and fires a few rounds hitting at least one driver who runs off the road immediately. The other few expertly hit tires removing more from the general chase group when suddenly the cars start swerving and moving out of the way of something. You see a huge heavily armored vehicle move in between them coming at you guys like a freight train. 

Jacket goes to fire again but the Van takes a sudden turn and he misses heavily planting a ton of the shots into the back doors of the car, Jacket immediately begins reloading the gun in the meantime. The armored car manages to follow you guys expertly through the turn and is keeping up as you see someone come out of the top of it trying to steady a shot. You grab Jacket suddenly and pull him down onto you as the bullet fires through the van and out the windshield shattering it barely missing the front end of the car. You hear Rust and Clover clear out the broken windshield from the front. 

Bodhi gets up and fires over you both as Jacket finishes loading his gun, he manages to break the windshield a bit but it’s made of resistant glass of some kind. You guys can’t see the tires either, they’re covered as well.

“Focus fire on the driver, both of you. Maybe if we put enough damage into it the glass will give.”, a second missed shot passes through the roof of the car on the back end. It rips through the whole car leaving a nasty twisted metal hole in the ceiling and floor right next to you and Jacket. Jacket gets up, straddling you and takes aim, you and Bodhi follow his lead and start firing in unison trying to put just enough damage in to blow out the windshield. You see it crack harder and blow out finally right as everyone runs out of ammo. 

“Shit!” Bodhi starts reloading as do you desperately attempting to put a stop to this chase. Jacket pulls the last grenade out of the box. He pulls the pin, cooks it for a moment and then throws it perfectly, landing right into the drivers lap.

You watch the driver panic for just a moment before the grenade blows out and he flips the armored car blocking the road behind you guys stopping the pursuit in its tracks. You look up and realize Jacket’s on top of you the way he is and sorta look away. Jacket gets off of you quietly and you get up and help close the doors behind you guys and the three of you in the back breathe a sigh of relief. You sit back down on the floor and look up at Jacket for a moment, he looks at you and you hear, “I really enjoyed that.” You look down suddenly and take a moment to actually breathe.

When you guys finally manage to shake the cops completely you make your way back to the safehouse and crack the back doors. Hoxton, Sydney, Dallas and Sokol are there to greet you guys and help move stuff. You walk shakily out of the back of the van and lay down on the garage floor.

Hoxton crouches down next to you, “Hey, Congratulations.”

“On what?”

“Being wanted by the FBI, you’re part of the club now.” You groan in response but he laughs and stands back up to move things.

What have you gotten yourself into?


	8. Small Improvements

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You've survived the initial battle but the war isn't over, far from it.

You spend the next few hours getting cleaned up and trying to relax. You can hear people moving things around in the office you had your meetings in. Most likely they’re either a mole or already had a listening device in the base nobody knew about. Every important communication at this point has to be carefully calculated so as to insure nobody is listening who doesn’t need to know.

Finally you get the message, Bain wants you to talk to the others in the basement. You get up and open the door and see through the window the office is a mess, downstairs you can see a few people getting ready for their security rounds. Things are even more tense after that armored vehicle damn near killed you guys. If it’d hit its mark once it would’ve been game over for anyone, and if it’d punched through the engine it might’ve been for everyone.

You make your way downstairs into the basement and into the gun range, the room is partially sound proofed after all. It’s likely the most secure room for keeping people outside from knowing what’s going on. You walk in and see Rust and Clover only along with the familiar laptop, you close the door behind you. Rust looks angrier than usual and Clover looks frustrated more than anything, however it’s Bain who opens the conversation.

“We have proof it wasn’t you, but that doesn’t remove you from being suspicious entirely. However your actions yesterday speak loudly, especially to a few members of our team. You were willing to risk your safety to give us a chance, and could’ve died for it. For that I’m grateful, thank you.”

“It’s nothing, I just want this guy out of my life at this point.”

“Don’t we all? Clover and a few others agree we should give you a little more wiggle room. We want to train you so if something goes wrong you’re ready. We’ve moved on to smaller heists until we can come up with a solution for that mystery pursuit vehicle.”

“Yeah, what in the fuck was that thing?”

“Some new car developed by GenSec, they wanted to give her a test run. While you guys bested that big bastard that doesn’t mean she won’t be back with improvements based on what you did to her. Your training starts tomorrow, part of it will be learning other guns. You can’t survive on pistols alone and we have a couple of good close quarters experts who can pick you up a bit. Add in some better cardio and you could easily run with the crew any day of the week, you already have infiltration specialties as it is.”

You sigh, “I don’t plan to stay here you know, aren’t you just wasting resources on me then?”

Clover cuts in at this point. “Considering how hard this guy is to track down? No. Whoever this bastard is he’s had to have been on us for a really long time and we didn’t even notice.”  
She has a point, Bain has a point, there’s a moment of silence. “I guess it can’t hurt for me to learn a few things.”, you say finally.

“Good!” Rust says with a slightly menacing grin. “How do you feel about shotguns? Your gun range training starts tomorrow.” 

You can already feel the bruises from the kickback. “Alright, thank you. Is there anything else?”

“Nope, just get your rest and try to stay out of trouble. You start at 4 am and your running mates are not patient people.”, Bain says with a small chuckle.

“Alright, then I’m going to go find something else to do for the rest of this evening. Also, thank you.”

You turn to leave, open the door and find Jacket leaning against the wall outside the room. You go to pass him and he grabs your shoulder momentarily and you hear, “Follow” then walks towards the nearby stairs out of the basement. You follow him quietly, though you’re not sure what it’s about. He works his way out into the little open space outside the garage and passes Joy’s van to lean against the wall next to the windows and fence.

You lean against the wall next to him and he offers you a cigarette.

“I quit those a while back.” You look away for a moment then back and he insists while giving you a knowing look. “God damn it.” You take one from him and both light them, you take one particularly long drag off it and look at him for a moment. You exhale and decide to break the silence properly.

“Thank you for earlier, you saved my ass. If you hadn’t been there when you were, I would’ve probably been in an even worse situation.”

“Thank you.” He looks at you blankly but calmly this time, you figure this is about when you caught the taser on the way out. You look away from him and down at your hands, you hadn’t felt like that in a long time. You both quietly finished your cigarettes and headed back inside towards your respective rooms, catching one last glance at him as he heads downstairs.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tonight you dream you’re sneaking around a warehouse, not sure what you’re looking for but you feel you’re in danger for some reason. Once in a while you hear phantom footsteps behind shelves or around corners and sometimes behind you but when you look there isn’t any sign anyone is there. Finally after what feels like hours of wandering you work your way into an office overlooking it and hear breathing behind you. You turn and the gun gets knocked from your hand before you can even fire, it’s Jacket and he pushes you to the ground. Before you can react he gets over you, straddling your waist with your wrists pinned, he’s covered in blood and breathing heavily. He moves closer to your face, his expression is intense. As he does the blood seems to move on its own, moving off him and onto you in the same pattern.

The alarm goes off, it’s 3:30. Your heart is beating fast, your breathing is heavy. You’re not sure what you’re feeling, it’s something complicated and you don’t have time for it. You shake your head and take a deep breath, exhale through pursed lips and try to get yourself under control. You have training today.

You find your way in the basement only to find Bodhi and Sokol waiting for you, you made it on time but you can feel this is going to be a rough first day. Day one of training was the start of cardio and agility workouts. Sokol and Bodhi both give you back breaking drill after drill, starting with a 4am morning run. 

Bodhi hits the timer, “Just under 9 minutes, not bad newbie, but not fast enough.” You lean over to catch your breath. “Well what’s the average?”

“Like 10 minutes.”

Sokol who’s been waiting for you to cross goes, “You know what? Again!” He pats you on the back and you both start running again, you’re still lagging behind but trying to keep up as best as you can.

“Swing your arms more newbie! Don’t forget to breathe!”, Bodhi shouts from the side lines.

Sokol makes it long ahead of you but as you make your way towards him in the last stretch you yell out and speed up a bit. Bodhi hits the button as you pass you drop down and lay on the ground for a moment breathing heavily, “Hey good news, shaved a few seconds off newbie. But I don’t think you can scream the whole time you’re running.” 

Sokol walks over to you and helps you up, “Thanks.” He smiles, pats you on the back and goes, “Again!” You both start running again, as much as you don’t want to be.

They get you doing burpees and the like to bump up your general mobility and by the end of their training you feel exhausted but you know you have more for today. Bain sent you a list of who you need to talk to and when, next is Rust and Wick for guns at the firing range. You do have a bit of free time though so you spend it fiddling with the codebook, even if you don’t make any progress it’s nice to not think about how much your legs hurt.

You head downstairs and into the gun range and are met with Wick and Rust. Rust goes, “Wick says I’m not allowed to start you on shotguns.”

“Well, we need to see what they can do first. Pick your favorite gun and show us how well you handle it.” Wick gestures at the gun collection and you begin browsing as he puts up targets for you.

You pick up the bernetti quickly, do a quick inspection of it making sure it’s in good condition, load it and wait for Wick to clear the line of fire. You take a deep breath, exhale through pursed lips and turn the safety off. You fire your 14 shots expertly, hitting either center mass, the neck or the head on the three targets, even flicking between the three pretty easily to show off a bit. You finish the last of the mag, turn the safety back on and pull the mag out.

Rust laughs a bit and Wick holds a hand up to shush him quickly. “You have a lot of skill, but you need to get out of your comfort zone. Let’s start with an SMG, it has a similar grip and size so it’ll be much easier for you to start from. This one is a modified machine pistol so it’s a little on the lower powered smaller size so most of its general feel should be similar.” 

You spend the rest of your session firing at targets on an smg and missing a lot of shots. You definitely miss the precision and comfort of a pistol, plus you’re not used to the recoil of a larger gun. The repeat fire also did a number on your shoulder too as by the end it’s a bit stiff and hurts. However you do see a slightly nicer Rust today, one who as mean as his words are he genuinely gives you good advice, and by the end of the session you’re getting the hang of the recoil. You just hope Rust wasn’t serious about teaching you shotguns.

Evening rolls around and you walk down into the room usually occupied by Sokol and Dragan who are instead leaning against a wall nearby to watch. Wick and Jacket are already in there. As you enter you’re met with the familiar cassette, “Welcome to your first lesson.”

“You didn’t do too bad in shooting practice today, but now we deal with close quarters. Pick which one of us you want to fight first so we can see where you’re at.”, Wick says.

You look at the two of them and point to Wick. “I’ll start with you.”

“Fair enough.” You both take positions on the mats while Jacket steps aside. You rush in at Wick, low of course and he blocks your initial hits. You attempt to use his blocks to grab him but he quickly evades and backsteps. “It’s okay if you fail, it’s a matter of learning what you know right now and improving.” You change angles quickly and come back in trying to sweep the legs, and he steps out of the way. You get up and get frustrated and rush him head on, he easily steps aside and catches you using your momentum to throw you over his hip back first into the mat below. 

“Ow…”

“You take great care to sneak up on your enemies, right? Well sometimes you have to face them head on. You have great agility and with the training it’ll only get better but you don’t know how to use it yet. Let’s see how you do against Jacket.” Wick offers you a hand and you accept it and get up.

Jacket steps away from the wall as Wick takes his place there now and you both get into position. You rush Jacket but try to rush past him, hoping you can take advantage of getting around him but as you go to pass he grabs you and pulls you back throwing you to the ground. He moves in on you and you roll out of the way quickly and get back up coming in low on him. He grabs you and throws you past him and into the mat, you get up again and try to rush him and change directions at the last second. This catches him off guard for just a moment before he deflects you with one swing keeping you from even laying a hand on him. 

You try to come in again, losing the staying low advantage you had and try to go for him directly. He throws you easily again, you hit the mat.

“Alright so-” Jacket stops Wick.

Your heart rate spikes, you feel angry with how easily you’re getting thrown around. You rush him and attempt to hit as many punches as you can. He blocks each and every one of them, this just makes it worse and you go for the throat. He grabs you and redirects you into the floor, you initially get worse angrier and hear, “Please remember to breathe.” Jacket releases you when you start breathing normally again. “Assessment completed.”

“We have a lot of training so we’ll begin with the basics. Stance.” Most of this lesson is spent learning how to move and stand without having major weaknesses. This way if someone catches you off guard as you’re moving you won’t immediately take a tumble or can recover easily. While low was correct there’s a bit more to it and how you place your feet and weight you weren’t thinking about. You spend the lesson not looking at Jacket as much as possible.

You finally make it to your room and collapse and roll over only to see it on your computer, a blip. Vauban had replied finally. He most likely already knows you betrayed him, but it couldn’t hurt to see what he has to say.


	9. Looking for Answers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You manage to get into another mission with Jacket, hopefully things will go well this time.

He knows you turned against him, you expected that. But he wants to “give you a second chance”. He knows Joy is attempting to crack the laptop, and that she will eventually. He wants you to sabotage whatever plan they come up with and to keep him informed. If you do however he promises you absolute protection that even the payday gang can’t crack. Like that’s true, he sent a fucking armored car and you guys figured that out pretty quick. You forward it to Bain with a little request, “Can I please tell him to eat shit and die?”

You get a response immediately, “Not yet.” You lay down for the night, Bain will probably figure out what to do from here, but man you wish you could give Vauban a piece of your mind.

The next 4 days are pretty much the same, wake up at 3:30am and run 3 miles, workout routine, get better with the smg selection they have and get thrown around while learning how to throw others around. You’re getting pretty good at response throws and grip breaking though, and your aim is definitely improving a little at a time. It’s less about your own aim and more about getting used to the recoil.

You haven’t had as much time to focus on the codebook though nobody else has either, work on it has slowed to a crawl due to the security breach. You still aren’t sure what’s going on but you definitely see the change in Rust and Clover.

Day 5 of training goes the same as every other day until close quarters combat training, it’s only Jacket today. Wick is apparently busy with some meeting in the gun range for right now so it’s just you and Jacket. Something about this makes your heart rate pick up a bit though that feeling is quickly replaced by the workout that is getting thrown around by someone much stronger than you. 

After the workout you and Jacket get called in, something is up and Bain wants you. You both make your way over as you pass Chains and Wolf chatting about tonight. You head in and find only Bain’s laptop today.

“Yo.”

“Greetings!”

“So, Joy finally cracked the laptop. We have two addresses and we’ve given out the first one, we want to send you two on the second one. I’ve already warned Chains and Wolf to keep an eye out since they expect either you to turn against us or to have to kill two heavily armed people. They’ve most likely moved important stuff but we want answers, so be prepared to get that on site. It’s too dangerous for us to bring them back here at this point.”

You look a little uncomfortable, you’ve tried to avoid torture for information and tend to rely on basic intimidation and trickery. While not holely out of your wheelhouse you haven’t done that kind of work in a long time and for good reason.  
“I will take care of them.” Jacket seems pretty calm about this, so perhaps you two can be a bit of a good cop bad cop.

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------

After spending a few hours making sure you both had everything you needed you both got ready and headed out. Jacket seemed in good spirits considering your task, whereas you were steeling yourself.

When you arrive Jacket looks over at you and sees how tense you are, he pats you on the shoulder. You take a deep breath, exhale through pursed lips. You guys have work to do, the two of you get your bags, mask up and the safety comes off. From the look of it it’s an abandoned shop of some kind, fenced all the way around but one section of fence is brick wall. You duck into the alley there and quickly hop up and peek over the wall, Jacket keeping watch. You spot two guards at a back entrance but there’s a lip in the building meaning there’s a blind spot at a corner of the stone brick wall. You do see a few guards on the other side slowly working their way around the fence towards the corner where the metal fence and the brick wall meet. You pop back down and tell Jacket quietly and he nods then points at his gun, you hop back up and then drop back down. “SMG’s.” 

He nods again, points you to move towards the corner of the yard where it meets the metal fence again. You head that way, he follows you as well. You two wait and listen for their footsteps. You can feel Jacket change to becoming more tense, he signals you and the two of you both hop the wall and get the drop on them. You get your arm around one’s neck and choke him out, Jacket on the other hand just flat hits his target and knocks him out. The two of you zip-tie them and make your way over to the blind spot lip of the building. 

He passes you his baseball bat, gestures to take the one around the corner. He bolts ahead of you and clotheslines the further guy and you swing the baseball bat as you come around the corner striking the second guy closer to you. You both manage your second silent takedowns and zip-tie your second round. Jacket goes to drag the first two over towards the door as you quietly work your way around the building. Security shutters, you can’t get in through an easy window. There’s only two other entrances too so you have your pick. The back door or the front door, you take a peek around the corner of the front door. Two more guards but no blind spot to play off of. 

You return to Jacket, “There’s two more guards at the front entry but no blindspot.” He pulls out his silenced pistol and gestures to you. You pull yours out and each approach from different angles. As you approach your corner one of the guards rounds the corner and you immediately fire, hitting your mark. He drops dead right in front of you and you pull him away from the corner quietly. You peek around and the other guard had stayed at his post, he’s already on the ground. 

Jacket looks at you and gestures at your bag, right the body bags. You bag this dude and bring him around to the back door as you reconvene with Jacket. You quickly search the two unconscious guys for a set of keys while he stows the corpses into the nearby bush. You find the keys and quietly unlock the door, and peek through a crack in it. You can see a few guys sitting around but they haven’t heard you at the door yet. You quietly close the door and turn to Jacket, “I see four or five guys? They haven’t noticed us yet. They’re milling about waiting for us.”

Jacket bangs the door once and stands against it, you stand just aside from it. You hear from inside, “Fucking christ, IF THIS IS ABOUT HOW FUCKING HOT IT IS AGAIN WE’RE GOING TO HAVE PROBLEMS!” He goes to open the door and Jacket forces it, throwing the guy back as the two of you use the doorway as cover to fire into the back room. You quickly dispatch these guys and move into new cover behind a counter. You know more will be coming from the front end. You do spot a doorway to a basement from the look of it, this used to be a butchers shop too from the look of it. This big wooden butchers block is going to be great cover, you hear the next round of guys move into the room and the two of you focus on leg shots. You want as many people as you can question, even if it takes all night.

Jacket dips out of cover and in for a melee hit on a guy as another one hops the butchers block next to you. You fire into him, disabling him but he goes for a knife, you back up towards the basement entry when the door opens and you feel a sharp pain in your shoulder. You drop your gun immediately and yell out trying to turn around only for whoever stabbed you to grab you and pull you back into the basement throwing you down the stairs. You hit the floor of the basement on your back driving whatever was in your shoulder further in. 

You’re a bit dazed from the tumble itself and in a lot of pain, you look up to see the figure at the top of the stairs bring a metal bar down on the door. You look around and don’t see anyone else in here, it’s just you and him as he comes down the stairs. You can’t reach the knife in your shoulder easily either and it’s jammed right in the join too so you can’t even use your dominant side. As he approaches you while coming down the stairs, you try to back away further into the basement but it’s difficult as the floor is tile and you can’t get a good grip.

“The good news is the basement is impenetrable, the better news is at least I’m getting something out of tonight. The bad news is I’m not going to get as much as I’d prefer and I’m losing revenue by the minute. So if you’ll please not struggle…” His tone is steady and calm, above you is the sound of Jacket fighting off everyone in that building alone. It’s just you and him in this locked basement.


	10. Basement Encounter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You're cornered in the basement, will you survive this fight with someone so cruel?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: Fuckin' Torture baby

You keep trying to move away from him but he easily moves closer quickly. He’s a middle aged white man, short brown hair and eyes. He’s a little heavier than average build too and he’s wearing rubber gear made to be hosed off like in a fishery. He kicks you over onto your front and makes sure to put pressure on the knife as he zip-ties you. You yell out again and he hits you across the back of the head quickly, not enough to knock you out but enough to daze you again. He drags you across the floor over to a big metal table and throws you onto it hard, rolling you over onto your back and the knife. It’s stuck in the joint, you can feel the blade now that your shoulder is being forced backwards like this. 

“Oh quit your whining, it’ll be over soon. First I have to make sure you’re a good candidate, worst case scenario I’ve got a few worse bits to use. I have all the time in the world, nobody’s getting through that door.” You see him fiddling around with something in a drawer and start trying to move a throwing knife down your sleeve with your non-dominant hand. You quietly shift desperately trying not to put too much weight on the knife or be noticeable, you slip for a moment and cry out.

“I said shut it!” He turns around and has blood drawing materials. Your heart is racing as you stop working the knife down to act like nothing is going on. He starts drawing blood from you and while he’s focusing on that you begin moving the knife again. You can hear him grumbling to himself about the noise upstairs and the mess it’ll be as he works. You take it slow to move it since he seems to want a good amount out of you. You finally get the knife near the edge of your sleeve and he finishes, surprisingly he bandages you up.

“What? Not going to let me bleed out?”

“Pffft, and clean up that mess? Fuck no.” You begin to work at the zip-tie and your heart rate shoots up.

“So out of my own curiosity, what do you plan to do with me?” If you keep him talking he won’t hear or notice you doing this. At this point he’s fiddling around with some equipment you’re not sure what it is but it’s probably analysis shit.

“Simple, I sell organs. I order all the stupid drugs for these idiots but that doesn’t really pay the bills y’know?” He laughs a bit to himself as he works. You can feel the zip-tie getting close to breaking.

“Really? Organs must be worth a lot on the blackmarket?”

“The right ones, yeah. Feeds the kids, pays the bills, keeps everything cozy.”

“Damn, should’ve gotten into that game then huh.” You laugh at this as the zip-tie breaks. You quietly reach down as you laugh and pull the knife you have out of your boot. He realizes you’ve moved and turns around only for you to jump him swiftly stabbing him in the leg. “You know what? You’re a real motherfucker.” He yells out and you pull the knife out and swiftly stab his other leg. “Oh no, you’re not fucking going anywhere. I’ve been having a REAL bad time recently and I’ve got some shit to work out.” You shoulder check him with the good one into his own equipment and he falls to the ground. 

You plant the next strike into his dominant side shoulder, “Doesn’t feel so good now does it? How about we even that out?” You plant the next shot into his other shoulder. Your heart starts pounding hard and you feel that same feeling from the other day during the heist. You throw the knife aside quickly and start punching him repeatedly. You break his nose and you’re pretty sure a few teeth at this point when you change to choking him. “If I have to put up with another day of your fucking bosses bullshit I’m going to fucking flip my shit. If I’m this bad now god knows what that’ll be.” You laugh at yourself as you see him try to reach up to stop you. You lean more weight onto him when you hear banging on the basement door and snap out of it. 

Your pull back, your heart is pounding and your hands are shaking. Your breathing is uneven, very heavy and you’re covered in blood. He isn’t unconscious but he’s in a lot of pain, he’s bleeding but not going to die any time soon for sure. You miraculously missed anything important, he’s still okay to question. You flip him over and zip-tie him as best as you can with one arm. You make sure it’s nice and tight too just in case. You walk over and pick your knife back up off the floor. You make your way upstairs to the banging on the door, it sounds like someone is trying to break the door down.

“Jacket?” You say through the door. 

“Are you okay?”, it’s that familiar cassette tape thank god.

“Sure.” You put your knife away quickly and push the bar up. As the door opens you look up at him, he’s covered in blood and has a nosebleed. “Don’t worry about me, make sure you get the unconscious guys in first along with the body bags. We don’t want anyone who happens to walk by to notice this. We have a lot of work to do tonight.” 

You hear the tape rewind, “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine! Just get them in here so we can work!” You’re angry at this point and in an awful lot of pain. You can tell for a moment his demeanor changes then he takes his tense body language back up and heads outside. You come up the rest of the steps while he’s busy and close the door behind you. You use your off hand and hop up onto the butchers block to survey the damage. 

It looks like you guys’ initial non-lethal fight turned into an all out blood bath. Did Jacket just say fuck it when you got grabbed? Bain won’t like that, but it is nice to know someone is looking out for you. You look down at yourself and take a deep breath, exhale through pursed lips again. It takes a bit but Jacket drags the four guys in along with the two body bags for good measure. 

“Do you need a medic bag?”

“Yeah, but first you need to take the knife out.” You gesture at the bad side and he walks around you, he inspects it for a moment then carefully removes the knife. You swear a bit to yourself quietly then take your shirt off and he starts to patch you up for the time being. “Do medic bags usually come with pain killers?” You ask half joking.

“Yes.” A rewind occurs, “Look within.” You pull the bag over and take a look inside and sure enough find some morphine.

“Can I see the knife? Please don’t tell me it’s a little fuckin’ thing.” Jacket pushes the knife over as he’s working on you, it’s not a small knife at all actually. At least you weren’t bitching for nothing. He finishes patching you up, you put your shirt back on and you hop down, “I know it’ll be a bit on the pain meds and I’ll have to get looked at properly at the safehouse but y’know. Thanks... “

He looks towards the basement. “Don’t worry, I took care of that guy. He’s not dead, just in pain but we should probably question him first just in case…” You trail off and get quiet thinking about what happened a bit ago, your heart rate starts to climb a bit again. Jacket puts his hand on your good shoulder. “Please remember to breathe.” You look down and take a deep breath again then start to make your way downstairs carefully, Jacket following you closely.

The basement is mostly fine, there’s a bit of blood from where you were, you can see where he dragged you a bit too. Most of the blood is around him laying on the floor zip-tied where he’s still struggling.

“FUCKING LET ME GO!” Jacket picks him up by the back of his stupid rubber suit and throws him onto one of his own tables. Jacket looks down at his cassette player, opens it and flips it over then closes it. He hits play for a moment and you hear just a second of dialogue before he rewinds it quickly. He knows this tape back to front. He then pulls out a recording device and sets it down and hits record. 

“Who do you work for?” He spits at Jacket who doesn’t flinch, Jacket rewinds the cassette and plays it again. “Who do you work for?” 

“Fuck you, I’m not fucking talking.” Jacket looks down at him and immediately slams down on his arm and breaks it. He yells out in response, your heart rate kicks up a bit again. 

“Who do you work for?”

“FUCK YOU!” Jacket goes in for another strike and you stop him, “Hey hey hey, hang on.” You pull one of his metal tables closer and hop up onto it. “So, my associate here really likes hurting people. I’d recommend communicating with him easily rather than resisting. He kinda turned your upstairs friends into a pool of blood, I’d recommend talking.”

“FUCK YOU! YOU FUCKING DID THIS TO ME!” He glares at you.

“... Fuck you’re right. I guess good cop bad cop just doesn’t work here if you already know I’m a bad person.” You feign thinking about it a bit. “Fine then, ACAB it is!” You pull one of your throwing knives out and dangle it above his face, your heart rate picks up a little again. For whatever reason you can’t stop thinking about how nice it is to do this with someone. Maybe it’s the pain meds kicking in, you’re not quite sure. Either way you hear Jacket rewind the cassette again, “Who do you work for?”

You both spend the next few hours torturing him for information, you and Jacket work like clockwork to intimidate through brute strength and sheer cocky demeanor. At first he refuses but eventually around the two and a half hour mark he yields some things. That the organization is big, city spanning. They deal in a lot of different drugs not just pain pills and that they run out of a select few nightclubs but he won’t tell you which ones. 

He goes quiet again for a bit, you dig through his belongings in a nearby lock box you pick. “Oh fuck, your real name! Pictures of your family, hey Jacket what say we give them a visit?” This is the straw that breaks the camel's back, at three hours. 

“I’ll talk! Just please leave me out of this stupid war.”

“... Y’know what? Sure. What do you know?”

“I work for Capra, his whole crew spends most nights at the Tapestry downtown. Please just leave me alone.” 

“The Tapestry, that’s a pretty nice one. And that’s your boss? Not working directly for the higher ups huh? You must be low on the fucking pole. I hate to admit it but they probably left you for dead.”

“Please, just leave them out of it. I didn’t expect them to do this.”

You look at Jacket blankly, he nods in response and shoots him once with his silenced pistol. He picks up the cassette recorder after pressing stop and stows it in his bag. You guys make your way back upstairs where the four unconscious men are, they’re both awake now and fighting to get free. The two of you dispatch them quickly with additional silenced shots and make your way back to the car.

You both get into the car and Jacket takes his mask off, you do too and put it away in your bag. You look up at him now that you’re out of there and the adrenaline is starting to kick down and go, “Fuck… has anyone told you you’re awfully fuckin’ handsome?”

Jacket looks at you for a moment and you can see he realizes just how hard the pain meds are hitting you at this point.

“Your eyes are nice too.”

“Please relax.” A pause for a rewind, “We are going home.” 

Jacket begins to pull out and you finally respond, it took you a moment to process him. “I could relax real good if I get to look at you all the time.” He goes quiet not only to focus on driving but not to feed you anything else, you spend the whole car ride staring at him.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------

When you get back to the safehouse Chains and Wolf haven’t made it back yet. You’re pretty out of it and Jacket helps you in, Rust is already waiting.

“What in the fuck happened to you two?”

“Unnecessary resistance!”

“I fucking hurt, but I don’t give a shit at this point honestly.” Rust looks at you funny and Jacket rewinds his cassette, “Morphine.”

“How did they get fucking hurt?”, Rust asks as he helps guide you to get waiting medical help.

“Stab wound.”

You cut in suddenly, “I just need a goddamn nap, it’ll be fine.”

“Please seek medical attention.”

“I’ll take care of them, you look like hell.”

“I’m at 100% health!”

“Then go take a breather, Bain’ll be waiting. Kid, you’re coming with me.” Rust takes over guiding you and leads you down to a doctor they had in waiting. You don’t really remember much of what happened next, you were a little too high to focus. You know your shoulder hurt again for a bit, then you got bandaged and then you wake up the next morning to someone knocking on your door.


	11. Some Well Deserved R&R

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You get some time to rest while waiting for the next big breakthrough after surviving a nasty previous night.

You work your way out of bed, your shoulder is stiff and still hurts and you feel like a walking bruise, more so than normal. Examining yourself quickly you notice bruises on your knuckles and probably from everywhere else you hit coming down the stairs last night. You open the door and find Jacket. He's also bruised up and bandaged but doing a bit better than you, “How is your morning?”

“Stiff, painful. I need more meds I think. How about you?”

“Good. You are required.”

“Bain I presume?”

“Yes!”

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m at 100%.”

You look a bit concerned, you think back to last night then shake your head and walk past him. You have Bain to talk to and probably some bandages to change, and maybe some pain meds to take. You make your way downstairs again and into the gun range and are met with a laptop in a quiet room alone.

“So, last night went surprisingly well. Do you by any chance remember much of it?”

“Uh, the pain meds hit me kinda hard around when Rust took me to the doc so not really.”

“Just take it easy for a few days and have someone change your bandage. There should be some pain pills in your room already, use them as needed.”

“Cool.”

“You know, after all of this if it turns out you’re loyal the whole way through there might be work in it for you in the future. Keep it up.. Sokol and Bodhi already know to leave you be until it heals enough.”

“Speaking of how are Wolf and Chains?”

“Good, they got back in one piece. They weren’t expecting as much resistance so things got a bit hot for them. However we got some good intel out of them too, I’m just going through everything and deciding what’s on a need to know basis and should be common knowledge.”

“Alright, you take care.”

“Oh, one last thing? You should talk to Jacket.”

“... Will do.” You leave and head towards Jacket’s room. Sokol and Dragan’s usual hangout is empty, most likely they’re both doing security rounds. The door is open, as you approach you hear from around the pillar, “Please, come in.”

You take a deep breath and step through the doorway then come around the pillar. Jacket is sitting on his couch with a bunch of supplies for bandaging. He gestures for you to sit down, you do so and take your shirt off. He begins to carefully bandage you back up quietly, you look around his room a bit. “Last night was rough, and I’m sorry for how I behaved. I sort of fucked things up downstairs and could’ve put the whole operation in jeopardy.” 

He finishes patching you up and pats you on the good side, you pull your shirt back on quickly and a rewind occurs. “It is alright.”

“I’ll try to be more careful from now on, but I have a request. Unless completely warranted and life saving please stop me from doing that again whenever you can.” 

“Understood.”

“Thank you. Now if you don’t mind I’m going to fiddle around with the codebook again.”

You go to leave and he stops you for a moment, “Ask Duke.” 

“The art thief? I’ll give it a go. Thank you.”

You head out feeling a little better, as you leave you hear Jacket boot up something to play. The grogginess of this morning has faded and when you head upstairs you take a good look around the safehouse. It seems last night's success put everyone a little more at ease, so that’s nice. You look upstairs and see the office back in order, they either found what they were looking for or didn’t find anything. Downstairs you spot Joy and Sydney having a discussion about mask designs and decide to approach.

“Uh hey, either of you seen Duke?”

Sydney responds, “Yeah, he’s on rotation today. Why? Something up?”

“Uh, well we’ve got this codebook we can’t crack and Jacket gave me an idea. You actually might be another candidate, I’ll come back down with it.” 

Joy stops you. “Actually I can pull it up from here, hang on.” She already had a laptop up anyway she goes in and pulls the files quickly. 

“See, we’ve been looking at it from cold hard numbers land and I figured perhaps we needed a creative eye on this. Jacket mentioned the art thief but if you’d like you can take a look.”

Sydney looks it over and starts going back and forth between a few pages, “There might be something here, I’ll give you a heads up if I figure something out but I think I have something.”

“Hell yeah, we’ve had this book for over a week with no luck.” 

“Yeah, just send Duke to me when he gets back, I think I want another critical eye.” She starts flipping through it rapidly and you decide to spend the day relaxing and watching the dynamics of the safehouse. 

You hear the gun range training from below, Wick is very diligent about keeping up with his skills. He’s very disciplined. You hear arguing from Sokol and Dragan about sports that escalates to a certain point and stops abruptly, you’re not sure why. Perhaps there’s an understanding you don’t understand? 

_I wonder how Jacket’s doing..._

Clover spends all of her time upstairs in the office watching security feeds and Hoxton is constantly fiddling around in the office somehow. Rust and Dallas butt heads a lot over the tiniest of things but it never seems to get to them, it might just be a quirk of the way the two of them are. Rust spends an awful lot of time watching over everyone in the safehouse from the garage, as much of a hardass as he is he does seem to worry about everyone. No wonder he hates you. 

Chains spends a lot of his time fiddling around with gun parts, so it seems they have in house mods. You’re unsure if Jimmy is alive or not for the first little while you’re people watching until the rotation when he just gets up like nothing was wrong with him a moment ago. You’re not sure what to make of him. There’s one guy upstairs who has his room next to yours, you ask Joy about him.

“Oh that’s Tony Montana, don’t enter his room unless you have coke.”

“Excuse me???”

“Yeah no, wild right? I got told that advice and I’m heeding it at this point.”

“Fair enough.”

Much like Rust, Bonnie has a similar watchful eye on the safehouse. As you people watch she gives you the eye once in a while and you figure it’s for the same reason Rust treats you the way he does. Jiro is awfully quiet and spends much of his time in contemplation, you’re not sure what to make of him either. You see Houston once in a while working on the van, he’s managed to patch the holes but is still trying to make sure everything is just right. He seems to be a perfectionist at heart, you can respect that.

You only spot Duke once as he heads into the garage to talk with Sydney over the laptop and you’re not sure who’s in the small room on the side. You haven’t met or seen him yet at all. By this point it’s been a few hours, and you keep wondering how Jacket’s doing and you don’t know why. You decide to take a trip down the stairs near his room and take a peek at him through the gap to see how he’s doing. He’s still playing games, at least he’s resting. 

_I’m the one who got stabbed, why am I so worried about him?_

You feel yourself turn red suddenly, and decide to just head back upstairs and to your room. You got the art nerds on the codebook, you’ve learned more about the safehouse, and you’ve got a stab wound that needs healing. You spend the rest of your evening resting and seeing what intel you can glean from what connections you have. At this point you know every other person Vauban has hired is dead, and every one he hired after you and the payday gang have died too. Even the criminal underground has rules and he’s broken all of them.

After you give up for the evening you spend the rest of the night laying down and being ginger with your shoulder, you keep thinking back to last night and the other day during the heist. 

_If Jacket hadn’t been there…_

You feel your face turn red and your heart skip a beat. 

_Do I like him? No, I can’t be sure I like him, I’ll prove it. I’ll spend tomorrow just hanging with him and if things feel normal then it’s not legit._

You spend the next hour or so thinking about him until you finally manage to sleep for the night.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When you wake up the next morning you carefully get out of bed, taking care to be ginger on your shoulder. You’re trying to avoid using the pain meds as much as possible at this point. After getting ready for the day you make your way downstairs again, before you round the corner to Jacket’s room you steel yourself. Deep breath, exhale through pursed lips and come over to the doorway.

He’s at his work table fiddling with audio cutting equipment, you tap the metal fencing to get his attention. He turns to you and rewinds his cassette, “Good morning!” a fast forward, “Please come in.”  
You head in, “How’s it going?”

“Being prepared.”

You’re not sure what this has to do with his audio equipment but fair enough. “Could I just hang here today? I don’t have much going on.” He nods and you sit down and start playing games. You are weirdly reminded of when you first came down here, your heart rate picks up again. You take a small breath to suppress that and focus on games for a while.

You spend a few hours down here playing by yourself while you listen to the whirring, and mechanics of cassette tapes as they are being spliced together. At some point you pause as you hear a fight ramp up from Dragan and Sokol, it turns into a full on shouting match and you head over to watch a bit. They start getting ready to have a brawl from the look of it when Jacket stops what he’s doing, puts his headphones down and gets up. He walks over to the doorway and gives them both a death glare you hadn’t really seen before. The two of them look at him and back down suddenly and go back to their respective activities. It is an understanding, just not the one you thought it was.

You both head back to what you were doing and you realize something, you like this. You’re not even talking but being around him is really pleasant and feels nice. You start to turn red again thinking about this and take a deep breath. You look over at him and the red begins to return immediately so after another breath you continue to play. A little bit passes before you hear him stop what he’s doing and pull the cassette he was working on out. He walks over to the doorway and for once you hear the door to the fencing close and he makes his way over to sit down next to you on the couch.

“Oh, ready to join me?” You pause what you’re playing and get up to go look for a game when he grabs your wrist. You sit back down and look at him, “What is it?” Your heart rate picks back up, what’s going on?

He exchanges tapes for his usual one for the new one he’s made then hits play. “I have been thinking about the last few days.” He pauses.

“I mean yeah, can’t not think about how wild this has been.” You try to be a little snarky in what you say feigning confidence in the moment.

“You could’ve died.”

You keep up the face, “Which time? The time in the vault? Or the time when I walked into your base? The night we first worked together? The time where we got sold out? The time in the van? Or the other night?”

He stops the cassette entirely, grabs you and kisses you, it feels good and you reciprocate. He pulls away after a minute and fast forwards his cassette, “I like you. How do you feel about me?”

Your heart is racing, your breathing is heavy and your face is red as can be. “I like you too.” He moves closer to you, you lean back and he gets over top of you gently. “Jacket…”, you say breathlessly as you begin to make out with him. You wrap your arms around him and he gently takes hold of you, being ginger about your bad side. As tough as things have been lately being with him right now made all of that melt away. 

A few hours pass entirely spent curled up together, you realize at this point it’s probably evening and look up at him. “Hey, we should probably go like eat and stuff.”

He looks down at you and nods, you both get up and you look at him, “Uh.. can we keep this away from Rust? Like I don’t think I care too much if others know but like Rust will kill me probably. He’ll think I’m trying to seduce you or something.”

Jacket by this point has swapped his tapes back and looks at you. “I can take care of Biker.”

“Please don’t fight Rust.” You become a little concerned about that as a possibility before the two of you head out. Sokol is gone, probably doing a round with a few others. You head upstairs and hear people moving stuff around. There must’ve been a supply run while you both were busy.

Clover spots you two from the second floor railing, “Hey! Y/N, get up here.”

“That’s my queue, I’ll see you later.” You head up stairs.

“So, what did you do to the art nerds?”

“Oh, Jacket said I should ask Duke about the codebook and I figured since I ran into Sydney I’d see what she thinks. We’ve already tried brute force math and pattern shit, why not ask a different kind of mind?”

“Well they’ve made some progress, good work newbie.” She takes you aside suddenly and into the office. “Okay, we found a listening device in the office before, we removed it and have been examining it but it was covered in a thick layer of dust. I don’t believe you’re the mole because no mole rushes a fucking cloaker with only a pistol or gets in half as much trouble as you. I’ll vouch for you for now okay?”

“Sure, is something up?”

“Something might be, just stay on your toes.”


	12. Preplanning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After your recovery it's time to plan your next move.

The next few days were spent resting and starting to get back into your routine gently. You at least got the running back into your routine and Wick is teaching you blocks with your off side, he can start you on your main hand later. When not dealing with that you tend to spend your time relaxing with Jacket while he works on cassettes. He’s adding in more bits since you two are working together so much, and does take a second to let you decide how you’re addressed from here on out. You choose the label “Fox”.

Every so often during your rest you’re stopped to test audio. “Fox, please follow. Hello Fox. This way Fox. Please pay attention Fox.” It’s nice to know he’s working so hard for you, but it is nicer when he takes breaks and you both get to relax together. 

Finally you get the okay from the doc, Bodhi still takes it easy on you but Sokol lets you take your running hard. You continue your SMG training which is going well, your control is much better and though it hurts a bit you manage to keep up on aim pretty well. Combat practice they’re still pretty ginger about your shoulder but along with blocks on one side you guys talk about how to view a fight. Keeping an eye on your positioning in a space and having the ability to read a room. General combat sense will come with time and practice but talking about the theory is important.

That evening post cqc you get the call, Bain wants to talk again. You make your way up to the office and close the door behind you. It’s another meeting with Bain alone.

“So, how’re you doing after the other night?”

“Good. Just getting my shit together.”

“Glad to hear it, so we followed up on your intel and have been scoping out The Tapestry. We figure they’re selling drugs out the back but we don’t know if they own it or not. I want to send you in due to your ability to blend in, with back up of course. So I want to know, who do you want with you?”

“Considering the situation and possibility a good chunk of their gang is there I’d of course take my all around bodyguard Jacket, then Rust. Rust might be an old bastard and hate me but he handles himself well. I think last is Chains, I haven’t really seen him in action and he seems like he might be good with people compared to everyone else.”

“Tomorrow afternoon bring your three and we’ll go over everything initially. We’ll do a second run over the next afternoon and throw you guys in that night.”

“Got it.”

“By the way, anything strange happen recently?”

“Clover warned me we may have a mole, Jacket’s couch is surprisingly comfy when you need to sleep off pain meds.”

“I hear you’ve been down there a lot the last few days.”

“Yeah, it turns out sitting in a closet all day high on pain meds is less fun than sitting in a basement and playing video games while high on pain meds.” You put on your best vaguely sarcastic tone for this.

Bain laughs, “Alright have it your way. Just take it easy on the day of, no training then. I’d rather focus on our plan just in case something goes wrong.”

“Hey Bain? Thank you.”

“For what?”

“Giving me a chance.”

“I only gave it to you because you could’ve lied, you could’ve walked away even. But instead you were honest because even you knew something didn’t feel right. Your instinct was right, and even I felt it. You should listen to it more, don’t only use your head.”

“If I don’t use it I’ll lose it, trust me. But thanks for the advice.” You make your way out and spot Rust outside the room, he glares at you for a moment. You take a deep breath, better now than later. 

You walk over to him, “Yo, Rust? Bain wants to plan a mission tomorrow. I’m not going to say what it is out loud but I’d like you to be part of the team.”

“Kid, you know I hate your fucking guts.”

“Yeah but I’m not asking for you to like me, I’m asking for you to join me tomorrow afternoon to meet with Bain and a few others.”

“Fine, just know if you pull a fast one on us-”

“Yeah, yeah. You’ll kill me without a second thought. I’m aware.” He glares at you harder for a moment then turns away. You make your way downstairs, you’re a little sick of his behavior towards you. 

You spot Jacket heading towards three others on your way down, looks like he’s on business today. There goes your evening plans.

\-------------------------------------------------------------

Your next day's morning run produces results. 

“So, your issue has mostly been technique. Your run is getting better now that you’re learning but well…” Bodhi trails off.

“Your endurance sucks.” Sokol says bluntly. “But there is no quick fix, so you just keep running.” He shrugs at this.

“He’s right, we’ll keep with you of course for athletics training but the reality of it is now that we’ve taught you how to run properly there’s not much we can do outside of guide you and time you here and there as you improve. Good job kid.” he pats you on the back, Sokol does the same but nearly knocks you over. 

Hey, something’s looking up for once, the athletics part is still hell but you’re getting there. You’re also much more comfortable on SMGs and Wick puts you on the AMCAR as it’s a good all around starter assault rifle. It hammers your shoulder quite a bit and while you’re used to repeat fire this is a lot heavier than you’re used to. By the end of it you’re not quite used to it yet but you’re hitting the target paper and that’s the important part.

However today was a no cqc day, you head straight to Jacket’s room where he’s just relaxing.

“Hey, come with me. There’s going to be a meeting in the office, I need to get Chains on the way and Rust will already be there.”

He’s caught off guard for a moment then hops up off the couch and follows you. “What is our mission today?”

“It’s top secret until we get in the office, okay?”

“Of course, Fox.”

You both make your way up to the first floor and you head into the back room and find Chains there, he’s fiddling with the fit of a barrel mod when you enter. “Hey, I was told to recruit people for a mission tomorrow night. We’re doing planning in a bit, want in?”

“Nope, my schedule is booked kid. Just spinning my wheels all day and twiddling my thumbs.” He laughs. “I’m coming, don’t worry. I heard from Bain last night you were interested in me for this and I’m itching to get out of base after last time.”

The three of you head upstairs to an already waiting Rust and Bain. “The gangs all here.”

“Good, then we can begin.”

“So we know the building while crawling with gang members will also be full of people. We’ve seen a number of their thugs nightly, roaming in packs, some with visible tattoos that match our mystery cartel. They do tend to hang around the VIP lounge on the third floor too, there’s two lounges up there and one seems to be for whoever is in charge only while the other is for the cartel. The first floor is all dance floor and the second floor overlooks the first. The third floor is its own closed space that overlooks the street on the cartel side. There are back entry points but most are heavily fenced off or connected to alleys that exit on the other side of the block. So what do you want to do?”

“Honestly go in quiet, worst case scenario we go loud part way through to get into the VIP lounge. I’d rather see if we can talk our way in first before starting an all out brawl in the main area.”

“Fair enough, I’ll make sure you guys have stuff for concealment.”

“So we’d enter on the first floor, at intervals of course. Rust and I will go towards the bar at different times while Jacket and Chains? I want to see you guys combing the crowd. People talk at the bar, but I want you both looking for individuals that stand out or feel off in the rest of the crowd. Got it?”

You hear agreement from Jacket and Chains but Rust interrupts, “Why do I have to go to the bar with you?”

“Because, I can’t talk shop with a bartender and I know that. I’m good at listening and picking conversations out of a crowd. You can get the bartender talking and potentially get more information then I could. I’ll sound forced, you’re someone who frequents bars and knows bartenders and bar culture.” 

You can tell he’s taken aback for a moment and finally sighs, “Fine, I’ll do it.”

“Good. At this point what we’re looking for is an entry point, that could be a weak spot in their security. A straggler thug who decided to come down and have a good time we can rough up for entry. How entry is permitted in general and playing that system or getting in the loud way if all else fails. If it turns out they decide via certain factors we can play up those factors. If someone is willing to get us in because they’re too drunk to say no that’s a good way too. Clubs tend to have a culture, we just have to play by their rules.”

“They’re right, let’s go over the floor plan some more.”

The next few hours are spent going over the floor plans repeatedly, who to look out for and why. When to intervene with another person and what they’re doing, safety signals. Identifying weak people who might give you more information if you either sweet talk them or intimidate them correctly. Going over that there is such a thing as too much intimidation. You don’t want incoherent terror, you want fearful answers.

Jacket and Chains point out that a few of the guys with tattoos are ex-military from the look of it, something to keep an eye out for. They’re less likely to give info and more likely to raise suspicion if they spot you. The club is dress casual even for being a little higher end, it tends to pull the crowd of college age kids with parents who pay for their every whim and middle aged guys who are in their mid-life crisis or looking to be a sugar daddy. At that everyone looks at Rust.

“... I’m not dressing like a weird creeper dude.”

“Oh that’s not it, it’s the prospect of you looking like a dad in his mid-life crisis.” Bain says then laughs, Rust shoots the laptop a dirty look.

You try not to laugh but you do manage a smirk. “Okay, back to work.” 

You guys finish up the night with a sure route around the dance floor, random interval timings for entry and while the plan is going to evolve on site a clear goal in mind. You start getting materials cleaned up for the night and put away as everyone heads out to get some sleep. Rust and Chains are first, they decide to grab beers before bed and before Jacket leaves you run your hand down his arm and across his hand and smile at him.

“Goodnight, Fox.”

“Goodnight Jacket.”

He leaves quietly and you realize you and Bain hadn’t ended the call yet. “So Fox huh? That’s a new one, how long has this been a thing?”

Your face turns red for a moment then you steel yourself with a breath, “A few days ago he expressed that he wanted a designation for me in his tapes so it’d be easier to communicate. He let me choose and I chose Fox.”

“No, I mean how long have you two been together?” You turn red again.

“Not at all.”

“You can’t lie to me, I’ve been in this business long enough to know what both your body languages mean.” You look up at a camera in the corner of the room and back down and sigh.

“A few days. It’s a very new thing.”  
“He looks at you like you hung the moon. Your whole body language shifts around him and you touch him gently like you’re afraid he’ll break.” Your face gets redder at this, Bain read you both like a book. “You know, for someone who wants to leave all of this behind when we catch Vauban it’ll be awfully hard to leave like that.”

“Well, you already said if things work out well I might have work here. I might be willing to take up contract work for you guys sometimes.”

“Changing your mind suddenly huh? I kid. It’s your choice entirely. Oh, and I promise not to tell Rust, I don’t think he’s noticed yet because he’s too busy hating you.” He laughs a bit.

You laugh a little nervously and the call ends. He was right, you hadn’t really thought about if you did go to leave. The thought makes your heart ache, maybe staying here isn’t so bad. You leave the office and make your way to your room for the night, you guys have work tomorrow.


	13. First Timer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's time to enact your plan, let's see how much goes wrong.

You wake up the next morning and make your way downstairs, no workout today so you go straight for the basement. You round the corner and spot Jacket watching Sokol and Dragan, he sees you and gives you a soft smile and beckons you over. You both go in, he closes the door and you both head over to the couch. He lays down and you curl up on him as a few passionate kisses are shared. You cuddle in close and rest your head on his chest, you can hear his heartbeat and it's nice.

“This feels very good.”

“Your tape needs a little work, that one’s a little weird.” You laugh softly and you see him smile a little again. “It’s a little exciting to get back out y’know? I don’t care for loud work but it is nice to know people seem to have my back.” Jacket nods in response and begins to run his fingers through your hair. 

_I mean, I’m already wanted by the feds and can’t just pretend none of this happened. I like being around Jacket… maybe asking Bain if I can stay after everything is said and done isn’t a bad idea._

You relax into him as he starts a game up, it’s nice to listen to him play and kiss him once in a while when he least expects it. Throws a curveball into games he’s played a dozen or so times. Finally you two make your way up to the office where Rust and Chains are waiting, you spend your afternoon running back over the plan again one last time to make sure everyone knows their rolls.

“Okay, Rust is first to go in, order at the bar and chat up the bartender. 7 Minutes later, Chains. Start to make your way around the dancefloor and find a spot you like. Look out for a thug on his own partying, someone who seems like VIP material who’s particularly hammered or others who stand out. Silently signal any you spot with the military tattoos, we need to avoid them. I’m next at the 9 minute mark, I’ll order a drink and sit down and listen to people sitting and chatting. I’ll signal if I hear or notice anything interesting or figure anything out. At the 5 minute mark is Jacket, same as Chains but go the opposite way around the dance floor. I need you guys to cover as much space as possible. We should still however all be able to see one another, so keep your positioning in mind and sight lines. Gather what intel you can, as soon as you have something good signal and we’ll meet up on the second floor on our way to the VIP lounge. Move in intervals even then, we don’t want people to think we’re all one group. At that point we can easily decide the rest of the plan there. Be prepared though, if one of us gets found out shit could go south quickly. Got it?”

A sound of agreement through the room. Bain laughs, “You’re handling this well newbie.”

“I mean I’ve been planning and committing thefts for years now without getting caught really. I’m only now wanted by the feds because of the heist. You gotta give me a little credit.” You say this with a legitimate confidence you haven’t quite had for a while.  
Rust gives you a weird look over this but Bain seems pleased and so do Jacket and Chains so for once he doesn’t complain. You guys spend the next little while making sure your stuff is packed and waiting for the night to fall. After you do your last go over of your heist bag you spot Jacket near the garage, he beckons you over and you follow him to where you two smoked previously. He takes a quick look around then embraces you and kisses you, you reciprocate of course and then both lean against the wall. 

He retrieves his cigarettes and offers you one, you accept easily. You’re in good company and you have three people you trust with you tonight. When you both finish you reach up and gently caress his face for a moment. You smile softly at him, he puts his arms around you quietly and you both hold each other for a bit. You both release each other from your quiet moment and head back inside, you have work to do tonight. 

\------------------------------------------------------

You guys make your way around the building at different points within a block or two of the nightclub entrance and you give the signal. Rust enters, you guys wait. Nothing seems to go off, no warnings and 7 minutes arrives. Chains goes in with a small crowd of people getting let in. No signal, 9 minutes your turn. You walk into the busy nightclub. The main dance floor area is huge, you expected this. You quietly make your way past Rust who’s cracking jokes with the Bartender. You signal her and she comes over, “What you need?”

“Rum and coke.” She brings it to you and you pay immediately and tip generously, she makes her way back over to talk with Rust. You head over to a table, sit down and take a sip. 4 minutes until Jacket, you listen in nearby. A group of kids here for their first time laughing and having a good time, whose family has a bigger yacht competition at another table. There’s a small quiet argument going on between a group of women at another table but you’re not quite sure over what. You’re trying to focus in on them when someone sits down at your table.

It’s some random guy, he’s wearing jeans and a polo. You’re met by an over confident, ‘’Sup!”

“I’m sorry, do I know you?” You take a sip of your drink, visibly annoyed. You can’t see Chains from here because he’s sat in the way.

“You could.”

“Well, I’m meeting someone here tonight, he’ll be here soon.”

He ignores you and heads over to the bar for a moment, you check your watch quickly. 1 minute until Jacket enters. He brings back six shots and puts three down in front of you.

“Buddy, I’m going to be blunt. I’m already meeting someone and I don’t want to be shit faced when he gets here.”

“Well if he’s leaving you waiting he’s not worth your time. And anyway I’m here already.”

Your patience is growing thin, he’s back in the way of Chains and you see Rust look over in the corner of your eye.

“I’m trying to tell you, this might work on others but not me. Please leave me alone.”

“Come on! Live a little! And if he’s your boyfriend I won’t tell. He’s leaving you waiting, he aint worth the time.” He pushes one of the shots closer to you when a hand comes down hard on the table, it’s Jacket.

“Well would you look at that? He’s here.” You take the last sip of your drink and put the glass down on the table. 

At first the guy looks like he’s going to get up and tell him off but Jacket gives him the death glare he gives Dragan and Sokol when they fight. He backs down, takes his shots and runs off up stairs.

“I could’ve handled that myself, but thanks.” You feel yourself blush a little and take a quick breath to steal yourself. You get up and the two of you work your way around the dancefloor. A signal hits and you see one thug heading up stairs with a military tattoo. You make a note of it and start to people watch with Jacket. 

After a bit you get the feeling you’re being too still and work your way up to the second floor to watch from the railing above. You make sure where you go you have clean visibility with Chains and Rust again, the guy and his friends aren’t up here but there’s two stairways up so he could’ve gone back down the other way at some point. There’s a slightly different crowd here, plus a second bar and a lot more talking on this floor too. 

Conversations about latest news including the heist and the mess it left, the mess left in that abandoned shop. You feel a little weird hearing about this when Jacket taps you. You turn around and see a bouncer coming over, big muscular dude but obviously not a member of the gang. 

“The boss wants to talk to you guys. No bags.”

You both look at one another for a moment, “Which boss?”

“Smart, he’ll like you. Get the rest of your crew up here and we’ll talk in his office.”  
You oblige and radio down, “Rust, Chains. We’ve got a meeting with the man in charge. Come on up to the second floor.”

You hear Rust first, “How the fuck did you manage that?”

“I think we got spotted, but he seems to want to talk. No bags though.”

“Great, it’s a trap.” You can hear the sarcasm in his voice.

Chains cuts in, “Honestly, I wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. He’s willing to talk and worst case scenario? We’re the payday gang afterall.”

There’s a pause from Rust then an angry sigh. “Fine.”

The bouncer patiently waits for the two of them to make their way up, Rust and Chains arrive pretty quickly thankfully. He wastes no time though and leads you guys up onto the third floor. As you make your way up you pass a pair of bouncers at the top of the stairs, they all nod at each other. When you get to the doorway he stops in front of it, “Your bags, please.”

Rust side eyes you, as he drops his things at the door. Even you hesitate for a moment, you have your boot knife but if something goes wrong you have to rely on these guys only. But once your stuff is off Chains and Jacket quickly relieve themselves of their bags too. 

The bouncer lets you guys in, the room itself is a cut above the rest of the building. Very nice carpets, classical mid-1900s styled booths along the walls most full of people. You can see people gambling, having quiet discussions, a few of them are joking loudly about their work. It has a surprisingly bright atmosphere for a criminal hang out, at the end of the room is a wrap around desk. One side has tons of monitors, all cameras from inside the club. The chair swivels towards you from the monitors, a charismatic older man, older than Rust for sure sits there. 

As you all approach Rust leans to you and quietly whispers, “... Is that Mel Brooks? Didn’t he die like 15 years ago?”

You respond quietly, “I think so?”

You can feel Rust’s bewilderment and even you’re taken aback. Could he be a look alike?

“Alright, that’s far enough.” He pauses and looks you four over.

You step forward quickly, “I am Y/N and-”

“You work for the payday gang, I know you’re all payday gang. I want to know what you’re doin in my nightclub armed to the teeth.”

The room goes quiet suddenly, all eyes are on you four in that moment. You take a quiet breath and continue, “Well, I’m sure you’ve heard about Vauban and how he’s broken the rules.”

“Yeah, of course. Who hasn’t heard about the putz? He’s fucking things up for everyone, and giving crime a bad name. I mean we are criminals but this is too much.”

“Well, we know he’s hired a gang and we’re chasing their head down to get answers. A member of his gang named Capra has been selling drugs out of your nightclub and we were hoping to find answers.”

You hear him sigh, “Capra has been a thorn in my side for so long, I gave him the benefit of the doubt and let him sell out of my club because his dad was a real stand up guy. But to know he’s sent guys after the payday gang under this jackass? I can’t abide by that. Unfortunately Capra’s not here for tonight.”

You hear a grunt from Rust, “He probably knew we were coming and fled, fucking prick.”

“Yup, but he shouldn’t be hard to find. He’s a little bragger and if he thinks he’s trapped you guys he’s going to talk about it somewhere. I don’t know what gang he’s with currently unfortunately, but a bunch of his guys are here in the VIP lounge across the hall.” He turns his chair and fiddles with some camera controls and you see a few screens go black. “Lucky for you guys the cameras are just not working in there tonight, and the music? REAL loud tonight. As for the damage you’ll do in there? I’ll send the bill to Bain.” 

You breathe a sigh of relief, “Thank you.”

Rust’s eyes narrow, “Why are you doing this for us?”

“Bain’s an old friend, helped me fake my own death a while back. Plus one of you is floundering around with no idea what they’re doing and dealing with the growing pains fairly well considering. You need to cool off for once. Bain has a bad habit of hiring a lot of hot heads like you, Bulvan. You get one good kid with their head firmly on their shoulders and you pick ‘em apart like a vulture.”

You turn to hide your smile hearing Rust get scolded for his behavior.

“They played by the rules of my club, they didn’t start shit. However they did show their ass a bit.” He points at you at this point, “You, Ganef! You’re not free of criticism either, take this advice. You were less noticeable with Gever over here.” He points at Jacket for a moment at the last bit. “Your body language is more relaxed and you two make a cute couple. You also let me take control of the conversation, I can tell you tend to be the fast talker. When faced with another you just gotta keep going and out talk them. If you let them control the conversation they’ll put you in a bad place really quickly.”

You can see Jacket out of the corner of your eye trying to figure out what he just got called and how to articulate asking about it. Rust is staring at you at this point weirdly.

“Uh, thank you. I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Don’t just keep it in mind, take it to heart. You’re wanted by the feds now, and if there are people so weak willed to break criminal codes well you don’t have a lot of friends. You need to do everything you can to protect these guys and sometimes the best way to do that is to be the center of attention.”

“Thank you sir.” That one comes out with confidence, he’s right.

“Hah, sir. So formal. Also Gever, quick advice. Keep ahold of ‘em, they don’t make ‘em like that too often anymore.” Jacket nods quietly but is obviously trying to articulate his confusion.

“Don’t talk much do he? No wonder you’re the talker. Well have fun, try not to make too much of a mess and stay safe going home. If you ever need anything again, don’t hesitate to come visit but please don’t bring guns that time.” He gestures for you guys to leave and waves you goodbye.

You feel relieved to know things didn’t work out as poorly as they could’ve, “He seems nice.”

“Yeah.” Rust seems distracted, you really hope he isn’t putting the pieces together right now.

You guys make your way out and Rust goes, “So that was fuckin’ Mel Brooks, damn.”

“Yeah, I mean we apparently have Tony Montana in our safehouse that shouldn’t be too weird.” You feel Jacket put his hand on your shoulder and you look up at him. He is still visibly puzzled and hits play on his cassette, “Please help.”

“... Is this about being called Gever?”

“Yes.”

You think about how much you’re willing to tell him at this point and omit a bit just to keep Rust in the dark, “He called you a strongman but like in an endearing way.”

“Why?”

“We’ll talk about it later, we’ve got work to do.” You guys retrieve your bags and mask up. As your masks go on you hear the music from downstairs get louder. 

You look at the three of them and hear the doors unlock, Jacket and Rust kick the doors in and crouch as you all open fire. Once again you need answers, so you aim for non-lethal when you spot someone ducking into a side door.

“Shit.” You bolt through the chaos for the doorway, nobody’s fucking getting away and if he’s running like that he knows something. It’s a spiral stairway with a metal railing, you can hear him just ahead of you and you try to keep up. You hear him get to the bottom, you’re a little behind him and as you come around you see him kick the door open and run into the alleyway. You chase him out into the alley and immediately get hit in the back of the head by something heavy. You fall to your hands and knees and he grabs you by the back of your shirt and pulls you further back into the alley. You haven’t quite gotten your bearings yet, your head hurts and you can hear him vaguely talking on a cell phone. 

You try to start getting up when he kicks you in response, your heart rate spikes hard. That feeling comes back, your breathing becomes heavy, you go for a knife.

“Yeah no, I’ve got ‘em. I’ll get ‘em through the fence and out of the way of the rest of these idiots for you.” You stab him in the leg, he doubles over in pain and drops the cell phone. You use this to grab him and throw him to the ground. You start to get up and try to take a breath while working your way to your feet when he grabs you on your way up. He pulls you back down and gets up over you starting to choke you. 

You panic for a moment, you can’t breathe. Initially you try to pull his hands off you but after a moment you stop, you reach for the knife in his leg and try to pull it out when you hear the door open. 

It’s Rust, “What the fuck!?” Your vision starts to go, you hear for a moment someone approach quickly and he takes a hit to the back of the head and gets pulled off of you and thrown into the nearby wall. Jacket had run past Rust and pulled him off you, you start to get air again. Rust comes over to check in on you, you’ve gotten enough air into you but your heart is beating hard and fast. You see the guy move a bit and you go to rush him ready to punch him. Jacket grabs you by the back of your shirt and stops you, “Fox, please remember to breathe.” You struggle for a moment but give up quickly and take a deep breath. 

Jacket let’s go, “Rust, please take Fox. I will handle him.”

“Jesus kid, are you okay?” You don’t really respond, you just nod a little. You point at the cellphone he dropped, Jacket picks it up along with the runner. You guys make your way upstairs, Jacket ahead of you carrying this guy over his shoulder. You’re watching him closely to make sure he doesn’t try anything.

You guys make your way back up and see Chains working out who’s good enough to question.

“I was wondering when you’d get back, you left me here to do all the work.”

“We had a fuckin’ runner, so sue me.” Rust responds. Chains laughs about it and you make your way over to a booth and sit down. The room is very much like the other room just without the desk and more tables in the middle. You survey the carnage a bit as Jacket throws the guy down on a table unceremoniously. A few people might have ended up on the lethal end and that’s fine but it looks like we have a few good candidates. 

Jacket makes his way back over to you and puts the cell phone down in front of you. For a moment you see his stance soften, he smiles at you a little then he becomes tense again and walks over to help Chains. It’s unlocked and the call has ended but you can pull up all of that. You finally patch in to Bain, “Yo Bain, things are going… well.”

“What was with that pause?”

“Had a rough fight, turns out the club owner is Mel Brooks?”

“Oh, that’s why we couldn’t figure out who owned the club. He doing well?”

“Yup, he said he’d bill you for damages btw, made sure to break as much shit as possible while here.” You both laugh for a moment. “So, Capra’s not here tonight. But we had a runner who was in a call with someone and have his cell phone. That’ll be coming back for Joy, it’s unlocked so I’m just going through a few bits here and there. I imagine all these are burner numbers so y’know but the last number he called. It’s xxx-xxx-xxxx. Take a look into it while we work, okay?”

“Yeah sure, you doing okay? You sound a little roughed up.”

“Yeah, I’m good. I chased the runner and we fought. I’ll be okay. By the way can you have a car ready at the back end of the block?”

“Of course. By the way, no civilians alerted?”

“I’m sure we would’ve been told by now.”

“Good, glad you’ve got someone else looking out for you tonight. Stay safe.”

“Will do, see ya.”

You hear a thud as you see the runner who is now zip-tied try to get up only for Jacket to grab him and slam him back into the table. Rust is a little ways away threatening another guy while Chains is doing a once round on the dead ones just in case. 

You come over to Rust who punches the guy again, “Now tell me where Capra is or this gets worse.”

“FUCK YOU!” Rust slams him down on the ground.

“Hey can I borrow your smg?”

“Sure.” You pass it to him and he clicks the safety off and shoots him in the leg. The guy screams in response.

“So again, where’s Capra?”

“I don’t know man, he knows.”, he says and gestures at the runner. Rust laughs and executes him immediately then walks over to Jacket.

“This guy knows where Capra is, for sure.” All the color left in his face drains as he realizes he was just ratted out.

Jacket turns to him and renews his hammer based threats. You take the time to start rounding bodies up into one pile on the floor while Chains is working another captive. Rust stops you for a moment, “You sure you want to be doing that kid? You look like you had it rough down there.”

“No, I’m good. Nothing I haven’t handled before.”

“Fair, you didn’t have to fuckin’ run down there alone and should’ve had one of us with you.”

“I’m sorry, I got stuck in the moment and didn’t want to let him get away. Don’t get me wrong I got lucky with you guys but that won’t always happen. You’re right.”

He’s taken aback for a moment, “Well, accepting your mistakes is good. Means you know how to survive in this shit world.” Rust takes the time to help you move bodies for a bit before coming back over to help Jacket. Every once in a while you hear threats, refusal and the snap or crack of bones breaking. You get the feeling Jacket’s a little angry with him too so that’s not doing this guy any favors.

Finally you hear begging and pleading, followed by, “Tell us what we want to know then!” Rust sounds impatient by this point which is fair.

“Capra’s doing a drug deal at the docks tomorrow night, a big one to another gang who wants to distribute. It’ll be happening around 2am, he’s going to be armed to the teeth though so I wouldn’t try it.” He laughs weakly.

Rust laughs in response too, “Yeah, well so are we.” He executes him and surveys the room. You and Chains have been periodically moving bodies, none of the rest of the rabble in here knew anything. 

Rust turns to you guys, “So we know what we’re doing tomorrow night. We’re gonna kidnap Capra and get fucking answers.”

“Rust’s right, we prep for tomorrow.” You guys get your stuff put away and take the masks off, you decide to head downstairs through the weird side stairway. Looking now you can see it’s a fire escape that was blocked off initially and was disconnected at some point. You guys head down and back through the alleyway and cut through the fence. There’s a vehicle already waiting for you guys and you all hop in. Rust’s driving, Jacket has shotgun and you and Chains relax in the back.

“Sorry for ditching you Chains.”

“No worries, that guy after all was the one with the real intel.”

“Yeah, but we shouldn’t have ditched you. That’s dangerous.”

He laughs at this, “I mean, our whole careers are dangerous.”

You laugh too, “True, yeah.” 

Rust speaks up from the front, “So how long has this Fox thing been going on?”

“Only a few days, Jacket wanted something to call me in his cassettes and I chose Fox. It’s easier than him trying to cut my name together after all.”

“Fair enough, though it doesn’t mean you’re part of the gang. You hear me?”

You laugh a little at that, “Yeah, I know.” The rest of the car ride is uneventful, you get back to the safehouse and pass the phone to Joy and head off to get cleaned up. Tomorrow you were going to hunt Capra and get what you needed.


	14. Down By the Docks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's time to retrieve Capra and our information.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry, I've been sitting on this whole ass finished chapter for days. I got struck by depresso and spent the last few days hating my writing.

Due to having to immediately go into another mission you’re exempt again from training for the day, which is nice considering you need a bit to recover from that head injury anyway. By this point some solid bruises have formed on your neck from the night before. Before you can even get out of your little room there’s a knock on the door, it’s Jacket. He comes in and closes the door behind the two of you. “What’s up?”

He turns from the door after closing it and looks at you softly, you both embrace each other for a moment.

“I’m sorry for last night, I shouldn’t have run off without one of you guys. I’ll try not to do it again…”

You feel him stroke your hair for a moment before pulling away and examining your neck. He doesn’t touch you but you can feel his body language change a bit in that moment. Jacket holds you close to him and you feel him caress you, his touch is so gentle. You pull away after a minute, “Wanna head downstairs and join me? I wanted to fiddle around in the gun range.” He nods and you both head out. The building seems pretty calm today, it’s a nice change from the mostly tense atmosphere as of late. You both make your way into the gun range which is devoid of Wolf and Wick for once. You figure they’re on recon at the docks or doing security probably. 

You get targets set up and clear the way, Jacket stands nearby to watch you. You take a deep breath, exhale and begin practicing with the SMG. Your aim has improved greatly from that first day on the range, but there’s still so much room for improvement. You start to get frustrated, though you’re using controlled bursts you’re still missing your mark and having control problems. You prep your next mag when Jacket walks over, he’s been watching you carefully. He has you bring your shoulder back, you hear the cassette, “Relax.” You take a deep breath, and he helps guide you and how you’re holding it against your shoulder better. 

He steps back after a moment and you fire, hitting your mark better. You were holding your shoulder too stiff and too far forward and not compensating for either. You finish out your mag and set the gun aside, Jacket walks over and pats you on the back and you both kiss briefly, as you pull away you hear a familiar laugh from the doorway.

You turn and see Hoxton standing there, “How long have you been there?”

“Long enough. Bain wants you both upstairs.” He goes to walk away immediately and you quickly walk over to him. “Uh, hey! Could you please not tell Rust?”  
“Oh, I didn’t plan to. The last thing I want to deal with is that old bastard yelling at you two about nothing. Now run along, don’t wanna keep the man waiting.”

Jacket has caught up to you at this point and you both head upstairs to find an office occupied by Rust, Chains and a laptop again. Rust is visibly annoyed for some reason, but Chains seems pretty chill.

“So, you’re leading again tonight. We’ve been scouting the docks and listening in and we think we know where they’re going to meet. Dock 6 looks to be their pick, be ready. They might know we’re coming so be prepared for a trap. We’ll have escape ready just in case, and a bit of cover for it too. Be ready for anything, try not to split up too much. We don’t have enough info to tell you what they’ll be carrying or be ready for unfortunately and we don’t have time to find out more.”

You look over the map of the docks, “Right, our escape spaces are on either side of this warehouse. There’s a metal wall on either side so we’ll have to go through the warehouse to get where we need to. But it also means to get down to the docks they’ll have to pass through it too. We might want to get there early.” 

Rust looks over the map too, “Yeah, that’s a rough space to move through in an escape too, it’s all close quarters. Easy for an ambush.”

“So I guess pack for close quarters. Shotguns, SMGs, that kind of stuff. We might want to clear it ahead and use it as a hiding spot thinking about it.”

“Unless he’s got guys watching it, we don’t know if he does. He’d get spooked then…”

You and Rust are both looking it over thinking when Chains interrupts, “We may have to just take the chance and hope we get lucky.”

“Worst case scenario we pack for a heavy engagement instead of packing light. I hate to say it but it might be best to go in aggressive instead of coming in quietly.”

Rust laughs, “Never thought I’d hear you say that wallflower. I like it, hit ‘em hard and fast right?”

“Yup. So I guess we’re going in close quarters, loud. So ignore silence requirements at this point then?”

Chains cuts in, “Finally, I get to use grenades again.”

“EXCUSE ME???”

“Oh fuck, I forgot you haven’t done grenade training…” You see Rust start pondering that. “When I yell grenade and you see me throw one, don't go towards where I threw it, you’ll be fine.”

“I know that part! I’m not carrying grenades.”

“Suit yourself kid.” He laughs again at this. At least his mood has improved from the start of the meeting. 

“What about you Jacket? You excited to have grenades back?”

With no hesitation you see him hit play, “Yes.” He had that ready.

“That was very enthusiastic. Alright, it’s settled. Just try not to lob anything my way.”

The air was pretty positive by the end of the meeting, which is nice. You guys have a while to prepare and you start picking things up again as people leave. You gesture for Jacket to leave and as the door closes you hear Bain again, “So. I shouldn’t be telling you this. If you haven’t figured it out by this point though you’d have to be pretty dense.”

“Yeah, you’re testing me. Taking that me working for you guys thing seriously huh?”

“Less that and more this, we found another listening device. We’re not sure when this one was planted though, it could’ve been after you came here.”

“...” 

“I have a question, what was the whole reason you left your previous gang? Why did you swear off violent crime for so long?” You pause at this and feel your blood run cold. “I know you told me a half truth the first time I asked about them. I also have heard the rumors that back when you rolled with them there was a wild berserker on their team. On top of that they had no problems with torture and killing of any kind. So why?”

You stand there completely silent for a bit. “I don’t handle life or death situations well, in them I tend to get out of hand and can’t control myself. I need to survive but it’s like I lose all reason in that moment. It wasn’t infrequent for me to become… someone I’m not usually or well would rather not be. They told me I was family, and they put me into situations so I’d get stuck like that and hurt a lot of people.” You go quiet again.

“I’m sorry this has to be brought up.”

“... Yeah. I know. Safety, security, safehouse stuff yeah I know.” You’re upset at this point, you didn’t want to have to dredge anything they had going on back up again.

“... you should go see Jacket.”

“Mmm…” You leave and head downstairs and start packing things quietly, Jacket looks at you quietly every so often while he’s packing as well. You decide to pack some extra grenades in case they’re needed, you might not use them but you can pass them to those who will. You’re scared of the thought that everyone is using you right now, but you also feel in your heart that you shouldn’t believe that. That it can’t be true, not with the way Jacket is. He listened to you when you asked him to stop you. They’ve kept you alive and safe and even vouched for you on more than one occasion. 

You spend the next little while double and triple checking your things, you want to be sure everything is where it needs to be and it keeps you busy so nobody talks to you for a bit.

\--------------------------------------------------------

About an hour before the meeting you guys arrive at the docks, you start surveying the warehouse and note it’s empty of people but full of boxes. The entire docking area is full of containers including outside the warehouse, they timed it this way so they’d be less visible. 

“Turns out it’s empty, I say we go for the warehouse but still go loud inevitably.”

Rust nods in agreement and you guys make your way up to the second floor of the warehouse. It has a window overlooking the docks and the maze of boxes on that side. You guys set up and wait, his group will have to pass through the warehouse and either you jump him after he passes through or while he’s in there. It’ll depend on if he decides to check the warehouse, you’re not quite sure what kind of person he is.

About 40 minutes passes by the time you hear the first murmur of his gang, there’s a joking argument going on. You guys take your positions on the second floor and mask up as the atmosphere becomes tense. You hear them as they move into the warehouse and the joking argument gets shushed by someone else.

Chains gives you the signal from the other night for military tattoo guys, this is annoying. You hear the first guy hit the stairs, you look at everyone else. We want to take him out quietly or to give him enough time so your target moves in without realizing what danger they’re in. He’s looking over the second floor and begins to move towards where you guys are hiding. As he passes between the shelves Chains grabs him and puts him in a choke hold until he’s out. 

You hear the call of clear from the doorway below, did they just assume since he didn’t say anything it was fine? You peek out and see him walking through the building. He’s wearing a nice suit and clearly holds himself highly but from the look of it he’s young, very early 20s. He’s carrying a bag and walking towards the docks, they’re probably going to be waiting for the next set of guys the deal is for too. Don’t want to step on their toes to be honest.

He makes his way out onto the docks and into the maze but you can see just over, they go to a cleared spot between a few of them. You make your way quietly downstairs and get to the doorway, there’s someone watching it unfortunately. 

“We’re going to have to go in hard and try to stop his escape. They’ll see us coming but we should easily have the upper hand considering how lax this guy is.” You hear a renewed round of laughing from outside.

Rust pipes up, “Christ, does this kid even know what he’s doing?”

You shrug in response and go, “Let’s go for it. Better now than never, don’t want to mess with the other guys. They’re not part of this.” 

“Right.” Chains responds. You four make your way through the doorway and quickly gun down the guard watching. You guys quickly move up and take cover at the containers as they start using the other side of them for their cover. You hear a shout from Rust, “GRENADE!” followed by yelling in a language you don’t recognize. You look over and see the kid bolt into another section of crates, they had a gap you didn’t see. 

You look quickly and see Jacket and Chains making their way into the fray while Rust is closest to you. “RUST! HE’S GETTING AWAY! COME WITH ME!” 

“GOT IT!” He quickly bolts over to you and you both start running for the section of container maze he ran into. You gesture for Rust to take the opposite way in and you both make your way in. You couldn’t see this section of maze well from the window, you don’t know where he went. You take the corners cautiously and quietly. You’re not sure where Rust is, you hear only one set of footsteps other than yours though. Where did this jackass go?

You get into a central point with no sign of Rust again when you hear one of the containers open from behind you. You turn and he has a shotgun trained on you, he looks absolutely elated. “DON’T FUCKING MOVE!”

You hold your hands up, he takes your gun from you and throws it onto the ground. “Well what do you know? I outsmarted a member of the payday gang. Now I can add that to my resume.”

He looks too excited, “You had that planned didn’t you? Asshole.”

“Uh, of course!” He starts to zip-tie you, “I kept telling him you guys weren’t that big a deal.”

“Fuck!” You start to feign struggle and he kicks you.

“The best part is, now I get to drag your ass back to him.”

“Wait, where are you taking me?” You’re particularly loud from this one and you hear a quiet climbing noise.

“To the boss of course, you know a fuck ton about the payday gang. You’ll help us get Bain.”

“No! You can’t make me talk!” You pause as you hear the slow movement across the container. “ANYTIME NOW RUST!”

You hear Rust drop down behind the guy and punch him out. “Fuck, is this what Jacket does all the time?” He starts to zip-tie Capra. 

“No, not all the time, but once in a while.” Rust cuts you free and you rub your wrists a bit. “He really thought he could get the drop on us by having a pocket shotgun…”

Rust starts laughing. “Kids are like this, unfortunately I recognize this kid though. Bain’ll have some calls to make after we kill him.” 

“What do you mean?”

“Capra is an alias, his real name is Andy. His family is big crime, his dad passed away a few years back and the eldest daughter took over the family business. Don’t get me wrong when we tell her who he was working with and what’s going on she’ll consider it the price of working in this business but it’ll be a little annoying.” 

“Yikes, wait… Are you talking about Bijou?”

“Yeah?”

“Oh, I’ve done some work for her, pays well and runs a tight ship. Loved working for her.” At this point Rust picks him up and you can tell the gunfire has died down and you both make your way over.

“Good work kid. Glad to see you taking yesterday's teachable lesson seriously.”

You laugh a bit and spot Jacket making sure people are dead along with Chains. “Yo! Look what we found.” 

You see Jacket look up as he swings down finishing one off. “Fox, are you ok?”

“Yup-” You get cut off by Rust immediately, “They had a shotgun to their back and almost died.”

“I didn’t almost die, I took a calculated risk and now we have him.”

Jacket starts to walk firmly towards you both and you stop him before he reaches Rust. 

“However we should get going. We’ve got our dude, don’t want the other half of this exchange to show up now.”

Chains finishes the last guy, “They’ve got a point, let’s move.”

The four of you make your way back over and take one of the two escape vans signaling the other to leave without you guys. The four of you plus your unconscious Capra hop into the back and head back to the safehouse. For once on a mission nothing went wrong.

\--------------------------------------------------------

When you get back you see Jacket and Chains take Capra into another room, he’s still out by the time you get back. You and Rust head upstairs to talk to Bain, you’re a little nervous.

“So, how did it go?”

“I trust them, done I said it. I’m going to go get a drink.” He goes to leave when Bain cuts back in.

“No, say it to them.”

“... Fine, I trust you. I know I've been a motherfucker to you since you ended up here and I’m sorry. But know this doesn’t mean I’m not going to continue to be a hardass on you in training.”

You smile. “Thank you Rust.”

“Yeah, whatever.” Rust heads out and downstairs.

You focus your attention back to Bain. “We found Capra, didn’t mess with the other gang, took care of his guard but there’s a problem.”

“Yeah?”

“Capra is an alias, it’s Bijou’s littlest brother.”

“Of course it’s Andy, we all knew he’d get himself killed eventually but damn. Even if we don’t kill him he’s good as dead, we’ll deliver him back to Bijou but if he really is in with this bad a crowd he’s not going to last long. I’ll make the call I guess, she’ll probably send someone over when we’re done.”

“Yeah, I should head down and help Jacket.”

“I thought you didn’t like torture.”

“Well one of us has to be good cop Bain. Plus he likes to hear himself talk, perhaps pain isn’t the best option.”

“Good idea, also maybe don’t let Jacket kill him.”

“I forgot about that part, but yeah, thanks. Also sorry I stormed off earlier.”

“No I get it, bad blood is rough especially that bad. Thank you for being honest with me.”

“Thank you for giving me a chance. Also thank you ahead of time for letting me into the gang.” You smile confidently at the camera in the corner of the office as you leave and he starts laughing.

You head downstairs and spot Jacket getting ready in his room, you walk in and touch his shoulder gently. “I’m here to help, also to make sure you don’t kill him. We’re going to drop him back off with his family when we’re done, okay?”

He turns from his workbench where he was prepping a clean tape and looks at you and nods, he brings his hand up to your face and gently caresses your cheek. “Is this about earlier? He didn’t hurt me, don’t worry. He did put me in a compromising position but I’m fine, see?”

He moves in while pulling you closer gently and you kiss. After a few moments you pull away, your heart is racing. You can tell he was worried about you earlier, and even more so after what Rust said. Your sweet silence is interrupted unfortunately by yelling from down the hall in the gun range. He’s awake.

“Let’s continue this later, we’ve got work to do tonight.” He flips his cassette and you both head into the room.

“YOU! How did you get free? How am I here? Where am I?” Oh, this is gonna be a long night.

“Well, Andy you were bested by my team, not me. We brought you here, and I’m not going to tell you where you are.”

“Oh yeah? DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM!?”

“I just said your real name.” 

You give Jacket a weird look and Jacket walks over and slams the hammer down into the chair then hits play, “Who do you work for?”

“Like I’d tell you, I’m loyal not that you’d know anything about that.”

You look at Jacket at this point and you can tell he really wants to hit him legitimately. You turn away and pretend not to look, he slams the hammer down into his shoulder and he screams. You put your hands onto his shoulders and make sure to apply pressure into the one just struck, “So, tell us who you work for.” 

“I work for the Order of Leo.”

“The fuck does that mean?” You put more pressure into his shoulder in frustration as Jacket moves in closer raising his hammer again.

“They’re a secret organization! Like the masons and shit!”

“That still doesn’t help if I don’t know who you work for or what any of that means.”

“Like, we’ve been in this city working for rich people for the last few decades in silence. I got in while the getting is good, we all work under Leo.” 

“Who is Leo?” You pull your hands back and he brings the hammer down into the other shoulder. He yells out in pain.

“Dunno, it’s an alias! Everyone has one, I chose Capra.”

“What do the aliases mean and what are they? And where can I find more of these people?”

“We have strict rules, we can’t just set up meetings with each other randomly. We also aren’t supposed to have places we hang out too often.”

“... Really dropped the ball with that one huh buddy? So what’s with the names?”

“They’re zodiac signs dumbass.” Jacket brings the handle end of the hammer down into his other shoulder again.

“So, leader is Leo, you’re Capricorn I take it? Who else is there?” You hold a hand up towards Jacket as he goes to raise the hammer again.

“Libra, Aries, Gemini and Sagittarius. Please just don’t hurt me…”

“Last question, why are your guys so fucking loyal?”

“We also lend money, if they’re in debt to us they can offer to pay it off with their service. We keep them docile with the drugs we run.”

“Are you telling me, you willingly joined a fucking debt based death cult with a zodiac theme and didn’t think that was weird? You know what? Don’t answer that. Bijou will be here for you in the morning probably.” You turn away again and make a gesture and Jacket hits him once in the leg. Not enough to really severely injure him but definitely enough to hurt a fuck ton.

“Hope Bain got all that.” You and Jacket head out, as you both pass through the doorway you relax some, and realize just how tired you are. You follow Jacket back who puts his hammer up and you get ready to head upstairs. He grabs your hand gently and stops you, you look at him and he tilts his head a bit towards the couch.

You ponder his invitation for a second then agree, “Yeah, sure.” He leads you over and lays down on the couch, you curl up on him with your head on his chest and his arm around you. Sleep comes easily to you, perhaps it’s how tired you were or maybe just how comfortable you felt around him.


	15. Downtime

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You get to spend some time relaxing at the safehouse again, things are returning to some normalcy for once.

You awake in the morning initially keeping your eyes closed and a little confused before remembering falling asleep last night where you did. You open your eyes and look up to a relaxing Jacket who’s gently stroking your arm. When he notices you’re awake he smiles and kisses you on the forehead. You look up at him properly and you both kiss, “Good morning.” Jacket smiles at you in response.

You spend a little bit enjoying each other's company before getting up, you take a peek out and spot Sokol. You really don’t want someone to see you disheveled and leaving Jacket’s room, you hadn’t thought about that last night. Jacket looks at you confused as he shifts his cassettes around. You’re still mulling over options for Sokol to not see you as you leave and Jacket just takes you by the hand and leads you out with him. 

You quietly protest, “Jacket, do you know how this looks?” He nods in response and continues to lead you upstairs. You blush and stop him again halfway up the stairs, “But what about Rust? I just got him to be okay with me.” You see him finally relent and let you go ahead of him, you meet back up after getting ready for the day and head over to chill on the couch.

Clover comes down a little later and spots you both, “Hey, the phone from the other night? It’s numbers were a bust.” 

“Figured as much, and Andy?”

“Back with Bijou, his info was surprisingly good. We don’t have a lot on them, they tend to try to stay quiet. However we do have rumors about the names Sagittarius and Libra, we’ll be following up on them. However we want to get Vauban to try again, you up for some burglary soon?”

“Of course.”

“Good, Bain and I are planning some burglaries, if you want you can bring your partner but that’s up to you.” She gives you a knowing smile, you blush a little in response.

As you’re talking Rust enters the safehouse and heads towards the garage, Jacket glares at him a bit as he passes.

“I’m going to guess we’ll be doing multiple burglaries simultaneously?” 

“Yup, we’ll give you a heads up when we have more info.” 

“Thanks, I’m just excited to get back to what I know best. But I wouldn’t be opposed to a little more of what I’ve been doing.”

“Oh, getting a taste for it huh?” She chuckles at this. “I’ll keep that in mind while we figure out our next moves.” She heads back upstairs where you see her through the window have a short talk with Hoxton. The two of them share a smile and a laugh.

A little bit later you hear Sokol and Dragan start one of their fights and you look at Jacket, “Oh huh, you’re not down there to stop them…” He shrugs in response and smiles at you. It’s nice for things to be pretty normal for once, as normal as the payday gang can be. 

Later in the afternoon you both head out to your smoking spot, a long passionate kiss is shared before you both lean against the wall. He goes to offer you a cigarette when you hear something on the other side of the chain link fence and stop. You point at your ear, he shakes his head, you gesture for him to quietly come with you. You both take a quiet step towards the fence and you gesture for him to follow you up it. The two of you quickly hop the fence and spot one of the gang members bolt from below you and away.

Jacket drops first and quickly catches up to him, you second knowing he’ll manage this without you. You hear the sound of him hitting the pavement below Jacket and he zip-ties him and starts dragging him back towards the safehouse. You meanwhile take a look and notice something’s up with the camera on this side, it’s been tampered with. As Jacket reaches you, you point at the camera, “Someone’s been tampering with our cameras without us noticing. Let’s get him in and ask Clover about it.” He nods in response and the two of you drag this thug into the safehouse.

You head upstairs to the office immediately as Rust and a few others join to ‘greet” this man. You lean in, “Hey, Clover. You might want to see this, one of our cameras has been tampered with and we found a guy sneaking around.” She drops what she’s doing immediately.

“Are you fucking serious? Which one.”

“The one on the other side of the chain link fencing.”

“Fuck me.” 

She heads downstairs and you follow but instead of going with her you head over to Jacket. “You okay?” He nods then the two of you look at the man on the ground. “So I guess the question on everyone’s mind, were you the one who tampered with the camera and if not how long has it been like that and why are you here?”

Rust plants a foot in his back as soon as you finish, “You fuckin’ heard ‘em.” The guy refuses to talk, you lean down and take a quick look at him and he’s one of the military guys.

“It’s one of the military tattoo guys, this one might take some work. But this guy’s a first, we haven’t tortured any of these guys for info yet.” You give Jacket a pat on the back. He gestures for Rust to remove his foot from the guys back and picks him up to carry him downstairs.

You go to follow when Rust stops you, “He can handle it himself kid, that’s not your job.”

“Oh, right. Sorry.” You sort of get awkward for a moment and head upstairs, you can tell Rust is watching you go before walking back off to the garage.

You sit down at your computer and decide to take a look at how much Bain has given you, the gang members files are all limited still but you can see all the info we have on the gang. It’s not a lot to run off of, so you take some time to put a few messages out to some contacts you have. Bain already has Dallas and Sangres out trying to get information at potential hangouts, it’s frustrating but there’s not much to be done for now.

During the evening you head back downstairs and Joy calls you over.

“Yo, I don’t have anything big yet but I was fiddling around and managed to recover some transferred data from that phone.”

“Cool.” You sit next to her, “What is it?”

“Uh, plan stuff, usual comms for drug dealers. But like the most interesting is how organized these messages are. Even for Capra being a total idiot these guys are well coordinated, Bain already has it. Side note, we might be nearing a break through on that code book.” 

“Oh hell yeah!”

“Sydney and Duke have been working every free moment they have. They think they might not be messages but maps.”

“Fuckin’ cryptic ass weirdos.”

“I know! Plus their method of keeping loyalty is cruel as hell, and I thought we could be bastards sometimes.”

“Yeah no, they’re targeting people specifically. But they’ve also been running under the radar, I wonder how they’ve done so for so long. Perhaps on sheer connections?”

“Who knows, we’ll probably find out when we get to the bottom of this. People like this love to hear themselves talk.”

“Experience, huh?”

“Yup. I do have a concern though, we know about this gang who’s on us but we don’t know their connection to Vauban. They could just be a link in a chain.”

“Then we keep going until we get to him, he’ll run out of chain eventually. Either way I’m not going anywhere, he wants me just as dead as you guys.” You stretch out and lean back on the couch.

“To be honest, I think Rust is afraid of you staying.”

“Me too, I’m pretty sure he hates me.”

“No, he was like that to me when I joined. He won’t say it but he worries about this whole safehouse constantly, maybe it’s an old biker gang thing or something.”

You’re taken aback by this, you had considered it in jest before but the idea that he might actually care is weird. You look over your shoulder into the garage where Rust is working on something and back over at Joy. “Well hey, if things work out well maybe someday I’ll find out he doesn’t hate my guts.”

She laughs a little at this, “Fair enough. Hey, wanna see this funny cat video?”

“Hell yeah.” You both fall down a youtube rabbithole for the next hour or so that starts at cat videos and ends at a video of a bird throwing things off a counter set to banjo music.

At some point nearing night Jacket finally shows up after getting cleaned up and sits down next to you on the couch. “Oh yo! I’m going to guess he was a bust like the last one?”

Jacket nods and gestures towards the basement, you hear the cassette click, “Want to play games?”

“Yeah, that sounds nice, just keep in mind my training resumes tomorrow.” He smiles at this knowingly, what does he and Wick have planned? You follow Jacket down into the basement and back to his room, he closes the door after you both get in and follows you to the couch. 

You both sit down and you smile at him, he looks at you calmly and starts moving closer. You go to move in more to kiss him and he puts one hand on your shoulder and pushes you back on the couch. You gasp in surprise as he gets over you then turn red. “H-hey”, you stammer out but he shushes you by putting one finger on your lips and moves in to kiss you. You reciprocate easily and end up making out for a while before repositioning to cuddle.

“Hey, if I stay down here for the night you’ll have to deal with my alarm. Is that okay?” He nods in response and kisses you again. Sleep comes easy to you again, maybe it’s Jacket.

\--------------------------------------------------------

The alarm goes off and you get up off Jacket, he looks a little grumpily at the alarm then rolls back over. You gently pat his arm and go get ready for the day. One 3 mile run later and you’ve started back on training, strangely it’s nice to be back on this. When you get back Jacket’s gone already, he probably had security stuff to do for Rust. You head upstairs and hear Clover, Sydnee and Duke celebrating, it sounds like they figured out the codes. You sit down nearby to relax and enjoy the sound of them explaining to Clover how to decode all of them.

Your gun practice is changed to a throwable training course for the day since you don’t really have much expertise there. You have throwing knives and you’re great with those but not much else, the bulk of your training wasn’t even throwing for the day. It was getting safety drilled into you by a very loud Rust, though you’re kind of glad because it does seem as if he’s legitimately worried about your safety with this stuff.

Wick and Jacket take time to focus you and your blocks on the other side since you’re doing better. You already know the techniques on one side, it’s just mirroring on the other side. They also start teaching you some basic disarming techniques. Nothing crazy, just weak points in the hands to make people lose grip.

Once you’re done you look at Jacket and smile, he smiles back and you both head upstairs to get something to eat. The office is noticeably very busy, there’s probably a lot of planning and briefing going on right now. “Hey, the last little while things have been in a better place, is this what it’s normally like?”

“Yes.”

“It’s kinda nice, honestly.” You turn and catch him smiling a little at you, you blush in response. You haven’t told him your plan to stay if Bain offers, or at least be involved. However you’re not sure if you want to talk about that in the middle of the safehouse where others could hear, and protest. You both share a quiet meal and watch the activity in the office. It looks like they’re hard at work planning whatever comes next, but you’re pretty sure you’re ready for whatever it is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So originally I wanted to put full nsfw sex stuff in this fic but I've made an executive decision. I'm going to omit those things however they won't not exist. I'm going to skip over those bits in the full chapters here, but I'm going to post them as their own works and point out where they go. So if you want them, you can have them. I just don't feel comfortable pushing that kind of stuff on y'all.


	16. Everything Goes Numb

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's time to get Vauban's attention and see if he'll try harder and make a mistake, after all it takes just one slip up and the chase is over.

The next two days are back in training, Wick and Rust teach you how to lob grenades and figure out trajectory quickly. As for cqc it’s going pretty well, you’re getting pretty good at blocking and they spend a good bit of time teaching you better disarming techniques. You get those down pretty quick, you already knew a few but they teach you a lot of stronger ones better for people with bigger guns. 

Finally on the third day as you finish cqc you get called up to the office. You enter and it’s just you and the laptop, “Hey Bain.” 

“Hey, you ready to go do what you do best?”

“Hell yes.”

“Great, you have two burglaries tonight and one tomorrow. All the info for tonight is on the desk and we’ll pass you everything for tomorrow after you get back.” 

“Sweet, this’ll be a cakewalk compared to the last few missions.” You take a moment to make sure everything is where it needs to be.

“Confident, aren’t we? Is this legit or just the usual bravado.”

“Eh, a little bit of column A and a little bit of column B, getting in and out without getting noticed is sort of my forte. In fact if it weren’t for the fact that the only exit to the vault area was being guarded the night I was in there I wouldn’t have been caught even by you guys.”

He laughs at this, “And yet here we are.”

You chuckle at this too and pack everything up. “Everything is here, we’ve got some planning to do. Thanks Bain, I’ll make sure you get a copy of our plans.”

“Already chose your partner huh? Good luck, stay safe and remember to rely on each other. It’ll just be you two out there tonight.”

“Will do.” You head out and downstairs as quickly as possible, you head into Jacket’s room and he’s fiddling with a cassette again.

“You remember what Clover said the other day?” He nods in response. “Want to help me plan two thefts for tonight?” 

You hear the click, “Absolutely.”

“Trying new confirmations huh? I like it.”

He pops out the cassette he was working on and you both sit down and look over the floor plans of the two buildings. The first thing you note is as soon as you get done in one building you’re going to be headed to the next one immediately. “Hey Jacket, look at the distance. Think we can make that?” He nods and you see him pull out a city map and start figuring out a route. It takes you guys very little time to plan through both heists, they’re both for pretty small but important targets held in smaller places. You’re not roaming a large building but two smaller buildings with clear pathways, it’s just a matter of finding the one of least resistance.

Night comes, you and Jacket make your way up to the ground floor of the safehouse. Meeting up here is Houston, Dallas, Rust and Wolf. You all wish each other luck and head your separate ways out into the city, it’s time to work. 

\--------------------------------------------------------

You and Jacket have a quiet ride to your first destination, just a little ways away. Higher end small office building, the big ticket item? Their servers, it’s an accounting firm that deals with pretty wealthy people. It’s not likely you’ll get crazy money but you’ll definitely get something that’s newsworthy and worth a good bit. Jacket finds a spot to park and you both make your way to the building, from the notes you spotted it was unguarded. It has a totally digital security system, but the electric door locks on the basement and front door are both older models. 

You both mask up, you take your deep breath and pop the first jammer down. The door unlocks immediately, you both push the door open and pass into the lobby. On the left is the doorway to the upper floors, that one has a much higher end newer lock and can’t be easily taken out like the first door. However the basement is the older lock you want, and you can knock the power out. The doors have independent power sources but the windows depend on the building power. You make your way to the door at the back of the lobby on the right side, second ecm jammer goes down and the lock pops like the first. Jacket stays up above to watch the area and make sure nobody comes in or sees the jammer. 

You make your way into the basement, the lights popped on when the door opened. It probably runs on a simple sensor so it’s nothing to worry about. You make your way over to the electrical panels, it’s locked of course so you pull out your lockpicks and start working on it quickly, it only takes a few seconds for you to get a feel for it and you quickly open it. You shut the entire power down for the building and head back out to the front where you both make your way around the side to the fire escape.

The fire escape here is locked up of course, the only way to open it is from the top of the ladder and it’s meant to trip a fire alarm. You put your bag down on the ground for a moment, “Jacket, give me a boost.”

Click, “Yes.” He gets into position and he boosts you up to where the fire escape balcony first level is. You climb on quickly and go, “Bag please.”

He nods and tosses your bag back up to you, you pull out some wire cutting tools and quickly unwire the fire escape without setting it off then pull the release. The ladder drops down stopping short of the ground and Jacket climbs it up to where you are. The blueprints said second floor for the server room so you turn around and work a small wire like object into the window. These windows have an emergency release that can be triggered easily from inside but not outside. Jacket keeps watch while you work, it takes you a few minutes of bending the tool and re-bending it to get the right angle but you hit the release. You pull the window open and quietly move in, you know where the cameras are and just follow a blindspot route through the hallway with only a few moments of being on camera. 

It’s halfway down the hallway, this door has a keypad lock. Unlike the bank heist you have your kit with you and quickly dust the lock for fingerprints, it’s a 5 digit code, but 4 numbers meaning one repeats. You decide to head further down the hall into the offices, pick a lock along the way and head in. No computers work currently but you make your way to the manager's office. You start digging through his stuff and quickly find a folder with two sticky notes stuck to it in the desk drawer. “Change the server room password.” “It’s 43482, please don’t forget again!” You make your way back to the server room door and pop the password in, it opens. They grew lax with their security and it was now your fortune. You head in and quickly unplug the server and place it carefully in a bag and make your way back to the window.

You come back out with the server to a waiting Jacket. “Hey, I have a stupid idea.”

Click, “What is it, Fox?”

“I’m going to set the alarm off on purpose so the police are spread thin. We’ll easily be ahead of the cops on our way to our next spot by the time they arrive.” 

Click, “I like that.” You both climb down and you pass the server to him, he heads for the car ahead of you. You head in and drop an ecm jammer onto one of the special doors then turn it to feedback. The alarm trips and you bolt for the car and hop in, Jacket immediately speeds off. That should keep the cops busy for the time being. 

\--------------------------------------------------------

The next stop is a warehouse, this one has guards but no fancy security. This’ll take both of you though, unlike the last one since you didn’t have to worry about people. You both arrive pretty quickly, it’s a smaller warehouse near the docks. It’s surrounded by a brick wall, you hop up it a little bit to peer over. You see some guys passing by but they don’t notice you, you point them out to Jacket. You guys already had an idea of when they’d be passing, they’re a little ahead of schedule but that’s alright. You guys wait about a minute or two and hop the fence passing between rounds towards a roof access ladder. 

It’s locked, you were ready and immediately pick the lock. It only takes you about 10 seconds and you let Jacket up first. You use a hair tie to quickly keep the gate closed behind you and reposition the lock to look less suspicious and follow him up. You remember in the building blueprints there being skylights, and head over to one. You take a look through to make sure the office is where it needs to be. Your target here is a secured manifesto being used by the owner of the warehouse, along with something big he’s smuggling through for personal reasons. Great blackmail material and hopefully something good to sell. The goal here is to get some people talking and we know that talk will get back to Vauban.

You unlock the skylight and open it quietly, you both drop down onto the second floor between guard rotations. Jacket heads the opposite way to find the package while you head towards the office to crack the safe. You get to the corner and spot a guard on the stairs, you keep an eye on him for a bit. Like clockwork you see him head downstairs right on schedule and you quickly crack the office lock. 20 seconds, this was a pretty good lock, slightly older model. You open the door just enough to get in then close it slowly and head over towards the safe. You pull out your safe cracking tools and get to work, it’s not a big safe so this shouldn’t take too long. It’s an older manual one, you turn the nob a bit and you hear a spring. The spring is tight too, this one is well maintained even for being a model from the early 2000s.

You know accuracy is key and stay as quiet as you can, slowing your breathing so you can hear the click and the spring move where it needs to for the first one, 45. As you’re working you hear the door open, you turn to look expecting to see Jacket and instead seeing a guard with his gun drawn. “Put your hands up!” You put your hands up and take a quick look over him. He doesn’t have a radio, he’ll have to manually tell the others. “Get up, slowly.” You quietly get up as slowly as you can, trying not to make any sudden movements. You’re trying to slow him down, hoping that you can formulate a plan to handle him. You get to your feet, he beckons you towards him. You start walking towards him slowly when the door opens again, it’s Jacket. He grabs the guy as he goes to turn and you hear a loud snap then he crumples to the floor. Jacket drags him away from the doorway and makes sure it closes quietly, you walk over and answer his pager. “Yeah, decided to head upstairs for a few minutes. Thought I’d heard something weird, hoping it’s not a opossum again.” You hear an agreement response from the other end, well at least you guessed the right menace.

You return to working as Jacket watches the doorway just in case, 45, 72, 12 then return to 0 and it opens. It took you a few minutes but you got there, in it are a few books. You take all of them just in case and drop them into the bag with whatever the package is. You zip the bag back up and Jacket takes it as you both make your way back out. You can hear the guards moving around downstairs wondering what happened to their buddy so you try to move a little quickly. You get back to the skylight and Jacket boosts you through, you help him get back up through too. You head to the edge of the building and watch the guards moving outside, during a gap you both quickly head back down the ladder, you unfasten the band and leave it open this time then quickly hop the wall. In and out, a cakewalk even with the little hiccup in the middle.  
You guys get back into the car, he tosses the bag into the back with the server and you guys speed off once again to head back. You breathe a sigh of relief as you’re finally done being on, “Fuck that got hairy for a second there. Thanks.” You smile at him, he looks at you for a second then back to the road. He reaches for his cassette player and you hear, “Not a problem.”

\--------------------------------------------------------

Back at the safehouse you guys make your way upstairs, Rust and Wolf are already back. “Yo Bain!”

You hear a click, “We have the mission critical equipment.” Jacket retrieves the server, the book and the package from the bag and sets them onto the desk.

“Great work guys, Dallas and Houston should be back soon. I hear you guys set off the alarm at your first place?”

“Right as we were leaving, we wanted to keep the cops busy.”

Wolf cuts in, “Worked great actually, kept them from catching up to us because we had an alarm trip at the last leg of our first theft.”

“He’s right, I could’ve outrun the fuckin’ cops though.” Rust looks a little disappointed he didn’t get to race with them a bit. 

You laugh, “Well, this seems to have worked out well, can’t wait to continue our little crime spree tomorrow.” You pick up the set of day two plans from the desk nearby, you look over the building quickly. An actual upper class house, two stories. This will require a bit more work, but all of the spotting has already been done ahead of time so that’s helpful. 

Click, “We should go.”

“You’re right, we have planning and sleep to get. See y’all in the morning!” You both head out and down to the basement to Jacket’s room. He closes the door behind you both and you set the planning stuff down nearby and sit down on the couch. He goes to switch cassettes at his workbench while you relax. “That went pretty well all things considered. You handled the guard well and finding out my little alarm trip helped out is great.”

“Agreed.” He walks over and sits down next to you. You move in to kiss him and this time he grabs you and pulls you into his lap facing him. He caresses your face for a moment then wraps his arms around you and you both share a passionate kiss.

\---------------------------------------------  
If you’re into that sort of thing I recommend quickly going over and reading the nsfw fic for this section before continuing. It's titled the same as the chapter, Everything Goes Numb. Thank you. :)  
\---------------------------------------------

3:30am rolls around and your alarm goes off, you look at it sleepily and cancel it. “Sokol and Bodhi can bite my ass, I’m fucking sleeping in today.” You nuzzle into Jacket’s chest and fall back to sleep for a few more hours. You both wake up comfortably around 10am, you guys have planning to do today. You both sit up and you survey the room for your pants and find them pretty quick. As you go to retrieve them you catch Jacket admiring you, you turn a little red. You pull your pants on and go to head upstairs quickly to get cleaned up and ready for the day. On your way upstairs you pass Sydney who stifles a laugh, you’re not sure why.

You go to get a shower and realize as you’re undressing you were wearing his shirt when you left the basement. You bury your face into it and make an exasperated noise, everyone who saw you as you made your way up to get clean knows. You try to shake it off but can’t stop thinking about the idea of being open with him all over the safehouse. After getting cleaned up and ready for the day you both meet up and get breakfast. 

You sit quietly together and keep trying to focus on your plate, every so often you look up at Jacket and turn red. Finally at some point the kitchen area quiets and you look up at him, “I have your shirt if you want it back…” He smiles at you and you turn redder as you start thinking about last night. You look back down at your plate and try to focus again but your heart is racing and you can’t stop thinking about how nice it was. You spend the rest of breakfast quietly trying not to think too much about last night, failing to do so and being red as can be.

You both head downstairs back into Jacket’s room and start going over the floor plans, you take a deep breath to clear your head before diving deep. This building has two floors, it’s a smaller high end home, on the outer part of a neighborhood full of mcmansions. The important part here is a big chunk of digital documents stored on the homeowners computer in their private office on the second floor. They’re the kind of important that has a few guards so the security system isn’t unmanned, a mix of digital and personnel. There are sensitive windows so breaking a window or cracking it isn’t easy, all of its controls and general stuff is inside of the house. On top of that there are cameras so if you’re going to take out guards you have to take them out outside of camera view and make sure the corpses don’t get spotted which means there’s a security guard on a camera set up. However the guards have cards that can get you into the mansion, that’s the big part. You may need to use a jammer on one of the cameras for long enough for you to get into a good blind spot but after that you should be able to get through. There’s one entry to the office though, it’s via an inside corridor on the second floor. No windows, no view outside and one way. 

You both plan a route through the yard to knock out guards, there aren’t too many and the guards are primarily on the outside of the house. You only need one keycard and make plans to take the guard at the front door, he’s stationary and next to some thick bushes you can hide the body in. On top of that there’s no guards for that part of the inside of the house and only two cameras between the front door and the stairs. After you get upstairs though it’s free reign, there’s no cameras on the second floor. 

You and Jacket go over a few times and get a precise route through the yard down, getting through without the bulk of the guards noticing is vital. It takes a few iterations but you eventually get a route based off the map Clover provided. You have to hand it to her, Clover’s map is fantastic honestly, it isn’t just a house map but also a well detailed yard map giving you an idea of what cover options you have. A few hours pass before you both are absolutely sure of your plan without question and you both start packing, you make sure to tell Bain what your plan is and the general timing.

That night the two of you head downstairs and pass Clover on the way out, she pats you on the shoulder. “Good luck.” 

“Thanks.”

Click, “Thank you.”

All 6 of you make your way out across the city, it was time to get Vauban’s attention.

\--------------------------------------------------------

You guys park just out of sight nearby on a back road, mask up then make your way up to the stone wall surrounding the yard. You hop up and peek over and see the guards on time and gesture for Jacket to follow. You both hop the wall and take your route through the yard, you pass around a statue to keep away from one guard and through a set of bushes another way. Finally you get to the other side of the house where you can see the guard, you both stick to the blind spot along the house's outer wall and move in. Jacket moves a little ahead of you and quietly rushes the guy, there’s a snap and he goes limp. He passes you the keycard and bags him up taking care when placing him in the bushes so he’s hard to find. 

You pass the keycard at the front door, the door clicks and unlocks. Before you open the door you ready a jammer and drop it under the camera quickly then pass through to the right. The camera watching the stairs is on a pillar watching the stairs on the left just past the kitchen, you need to get to it. You both lay low passing by a window quickly and the second jammer goes down on the pillar then you both head upstairs quietly. 

As you guys are passing into the hallway Bain picks up on comms. “GET OUT OF THERE! NOW! SOMETHING’S WRONG!”

You respond in a whisper, “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know, Dallas and Houston just went dark. Get out of there now!”

You turn to Jacket and you both start to make your way back down the stairs as quickly as you can so you can use the second jammer to get back out when you hear a door unlock near the stairs. Jacket fires a few silenced rounds into the door and you hear a yell from the other side, your heart sinks as you head down the stairs. “Bain, I just had a thought. Check that database from yesterday too, it might be virused. If this was a trap perhaps the rest of our intell was too and we just didn’t know it.”

“I hadn’t thought of that, we’ll get on it. Just get back safe, got it? That’s your mission now.”

“Got it.” You both spot a few thugs at the top of the stairs as they’ve gotten out and fire a few choice rounds into them. Unfortunately by this point the guards are gathering around the front door. You make the run towards the back door at this point forgoing the camera worry and pass the keycard across the lock. It opens and you both run out, Jacket firing behind you both to keep the guards at bay. You make your way towards the back wall and both quickly hop it. 

“The cops' switchboards are lighting up like crazy, Jacket do you still know the spare safehouse nearby?”

Click, “Yes.”

“Good! Go there, I don’t think it’s safe to try to drive back to the safehouse especially if that thing rushes you guys again.”

Click, “Understood.”

You look confused as you get into the car, “Spare safehouse?”

“We keep a few dedicated safe buildings around the city for quiet hideouts for a night or two, it allows us to lay low in situations where the heat is on around the safehouse.” Jacket speeds off as you two talk.

“Good thinking, I wish I’d asked about that actually.”

“Well now you know, I’m going to go quiet unless something else comes up. Stay safe, please.” At the end you hear Bain’s usually confident voice turn to legitimate concern, he’s actually worried about this. You hope the others are okay, but your worry about them is cut short by worry about yourselves. 

Click, “We are being followed.”

You turn to look and see a pack of cars chasing you. “Yeah, I noticed.” You pull out your pistol and fire back at the first car tailing you, it’s not a police vehicle and you easily manage to hit the driver. He keels over and you see the car veer off the road, but there’s more where that came from. You fire the last few rounds at the tires of a few cars and miss then duck back into the car to reload. 

Jacket gestures at his bag and you open it to find an SMG and grenades, he points to the grenades. You pull the first one, you’d only really thrown a few grenades and even then at non-moving targets while stationary so this was going to be a new experience.

You pull the pin and throw the grenade pretty quickly, it takes a moment but you see it take a car out at the back of the pack. You’re glad you hit one but your concern is more that you didn’t take care of the immediate threat. The front car steadies and starts firing at you guys blowing out the back window, Jacket pushes you down and stays low himself. The bullet fire continues through the car and busts out the windshield before they stop to reload. You take the SMG and fire through the back of the car, you manage to hit a few passengers but not the driver this time.

You reload as Jacket takes a turn into an alley particularly hard, you brace for a moment so you don’t get thrown around. You finish reloading as Jacket barrels through the alleyway, it’s definitely slowed their pursuit but not stopped them out right. You lob another grenade and see another car get taken out, this time gunking up the alley stopping a good amount of the pursuing cars. It’s now down to four, four cars full of guys is much more manageable. The cops are thankfully still lagging behind you guys’ chase at this point it seems. Jacket manages to get you guys around the building and stops down a separate alley and parks the car quickly. 

You both make for the inside of the building when one of the cars stops and the thugs get out to fight. Jacket takes the freshly reloaded SMG and makes quick work of them and gestures you to go ahead of him. You head in ahead of him, gun drawn just in case and spot some thugs entering the other side and fire at them. 

Click, “Upstairs.”

“I’m not leaving you.”

Click, “Upstairs.”

“Fine!” You head upstairs and start to quietly clear out the upper floor. Downstairs you hear gunfire and yelling. The doors are locked except for one, that’s probably the safehouse, you crack the door a bit to look in and it seems empty. “It’s clear up here!”

Click, “Please proceed.”

You can hear him at the foot of the stairs, he’s trying to make his way up. You begrudgingly head in and look around, it looks like an apartment that’s been altered with some extra supplies and a bit of cover. You turn to look at the door and it has a bar for a little extra protection.  
You’re getting more nervous as it’s taking him an awful lot of time to get up here when you hear a grenade go off. You come back out and your heart sinks, he’s at the top of the stairs leaning against the wall with one hand on his side and he’s bleeding heavily. You run over and help support him and walk him into the apartment, “Are you okay?”

Click, “Yes.”

He’s not a great liar even if he’s not using his voice, you can hear how heavy his breathing is as you both move through the doorway. He lets go of you as you get in and almost immediately collapses, you shut the door and pull the bar down. You’re not sure if others are pursuing still but that doesn’t matter right now. You turn to Jacket and he points to a nearby container. 

Click, “Please remember to breathe.” You take that deep breath as you open it and pull out as many medical supplies as you can carry. 

When you get back Jacket has pulled himself a little further in and is laying on his back on the floor. He pulls his shirt up and you see he’s taken a couple of bullets to the abdomen. You start doing what you can to patch him up, you hear people outside the door. You’re packing the wounds to try and stop him from bleeding out but even you can tell he’s bled a ton by this point a good bit of it is on you. They probably followed that blood trail but that doesn’t matter right now. You’re trying hard not to panic as you hear them start beating on the door. Once in a while as you’re working he repeats himself. Click, “Please remember to breathe.”, every time you take a deep breath. 

After you get him to a point where he’s not bleeding out you take a look at him properly. He’s in no state to move or get up or fight, you can hear the door creaking. You take his SMG and reload it, he points towards another box and you hear, “I’ve bought you a present.” You open it and it’s full of grenades, you’re not sure if you’ll need them but you take two. The bar isn’t going to hold, you know it for sure at this point. There’s a table nearby, you kick it over and drag it into place in front of the door then plant yourself between the table and Jacket. Your heart is racing, but it hurts too, you’re trying to control yourself but it’s hard.

You take one last deep breath, the door finally gives and you fire into the doorway in bursts as people try to peek through or get in. You definitely hit a few guys and knock them down, but there’s more outside and you can hear them. You take a moment to reload, you can tell they know you’re reloading and you hear them move in. You lob one of the grenades into the hallway as they move in only to hear them try to run back. You duck behind the table as it goes off and you hear a few guys yell out. 

You finish reloading and after the grenade blast clears you see a few more guys make their way to the doorway, you fire again hitting a few. A flashbang makes its way through the door, for a moment you panic. The police? The flashbang goes off and you’re disoriented, you spray the last bit of the mag into the doorway just in case and go to ready the next grenade when someone jumps the table and slams you face down into the floor. You yell out in pain and drop the grenade and it rolls away. 

You hear a few guys filter into the room, three more, two stop at the doorway but the last guy walks around the table. You see a familiar set of shoes and a familiar suit, he crouches down next to you. It’s Capra, he gets close to your face. “Well well well, I get to take care of the two who humiliated me.” You can feel a hot anger start rising in you, your heart is racing and your breathing starts to get heavier. He walks over and kicks Jacket who doesn’t respond, “Oh good, he’s already basically dead so that’s one down.”

He takes your SMG from you, reloads it quickly and points it at you. He gestures for the other guy to let go of you and he does, “Get up.” You do as he says and take a quick look around. The guy who had you subdued is unarmed, you sneak a look and spot the other two at the door are armed with SMGs as well. You look back at Capra and he laughs, “Sizing up your chances of escape? Like I’m going to let you escape after what you did to me. He hits you with the stock of the gun a few times around the face. You take it willingly and realize that all of his guys are bunched up at the doorway, the grenade is on the floor a little ways away. 

He goes in for another strike when you catch him and disarm him, then take the SMG back and fire it into the three at the doorway taking out his guards. You turn back to him and you hear two pistol shots, there’s a beat and then you feel where they landed. “I’m not fucking letting you best me again!”

You drop to one knee as he moves in to start hitting you again and you go for him. You rush him just under his arms tackling him to the ground, he drops the gun. You grab him by the throat and start choking him out, repositioning to get as much of your weight onto him as you can. You can feel yourself bleeding heavily but you don’t care, all you know is you want him dead. You can feel him fighting for his life, you ignore his scratches on your arms and attempts to push you off. Your breathing gets heavier and you feel him begin to slip into unconsciousness, you let go at this point.

He’s not in any state to fight you now and you get up off of him, you walk over to Jacket and go into his bag and pull out his baseball bat. You walk over to the incapacitated Capra and lift the bat over your head before swinging it down quickly into his head, at this point you lose control and just keep swinging. 

You only stop finally when you hear others coming, your vision is starting to go weird by this point as well, you’ve lost a lot of blood. You steady yourself on the wall and work your way to the doorway with the bat and ready yourself. You wait for the first person to pass through and you go in to attack when everything goes black.


	17. A Waiting Game

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You awake in the safehouse, things are uneasy.

You awake with a start, you’re not sure where you are initially and hear someone near you and take a swing at them. They catch your punch and you hear a familiar voice, “Hey! Calm down! It’s just me!” It’s Clover?

You see her look up to everyone else and hear, “They’re awake!” and the sound of a unified relief. You try to sit up and the pain all surges back at once, you groan and grip your side. “Hey, take it easy. You weren’t in a great state when we got to you.” 

“Where’s Jacket?” You try to push through the pain to get up and Clover stops you.

“Hey, stay down, you need to rest. He’s stable.”

“No, I need to see him.” You go to get up again and try to push Clover off you when Rust walks over and stops you.

“He’ll be fine kid, trust me. He’s made of tougher stuff then I think you realize, he’s bounced back from worse. Trust me, I’ve seen it.” You lay back on the couch but take a moment to look around, Jacket is a bit away from you and so is Houston. You can see a pacing and agitated Dallas, Joy who’s working on something but you’re not sure what. She looks up from her computer and looks over everyone. When she looks back down at her computer you can see her focus more. 

Wick comes over to you after a bit and leans down, “Hey, you’re going to be alright and I can assure you so is he. But I have to ask, what happened in there?”

“We were most of the way through our heist when we got the call from Bain that it was probably a trap, we got jumped on our way out but we escaped the building fine. We got into a bit of a car chase with some thugs and survived that, but they chased us into the spare safehouse. Jacket made me go ahead of him and tried to hold them all off on his own. I got him in and patched him up as best as I could but he’d already lost a lot of blood. I held as many as I could off on my own before I got surprised by Capra.”

“Yeah, we found Capra, or at least what’s left of him. I know it’s bad but you did well, you kept yourself and Jacket alive.” 

“Yeah…” You look down, your heart hurts so much.

“Kid, he’ll be up and back to normal in no time. Nothing’s killed him yet and this sure as fuck won’t.” Rust tries to comfort you but you can’t stop thinking. If you’d stayed down, but that would’ve potentially put him into a position to need to take more bullets for you. But you could’ve brought in more firepower then, but would it have been enough?

It’s mid-afternoon and the safehouse is tense again. At some point Clover, Hoxton, Rust and Dallas make their way upstairs, Joy is focusing on her work and Sydney is keeping an eye over you three. You decide to chance it and try to sit back up again, as you do Sydney walks over immediately.

“Lay back down, now. You know for a fact I’m not afraid of giving you more injuries if it means you stay down and heal.”

You stop part way up, it hurts too much to keep moving.

“Alright, I’m going to frame it like this. If he was in your state, and he pushed himself like this just to see you and didn’t heal well from it wouldn’t you feel bad?” She has a point, you take a quick look at Jacket for a moment and lay back down.

“Ugh, we’re criminals. I’m not supposed to feel guilty.”

She laughs, “If only the world were so black and white. Just rest, he’s fine. What you did in there, patching him up that way saved his life. You did the best you could with what you had and what you knew. Hell right before you passed out you went for Wick and you almost hit him.”

You laugh a little, “Fuck, either that training is paying off or Wick is slipping if I almost hit him.”

There’s a lull for a moment in the conversation when you look at Sydney, “Hey, when I get well enough I want to talk to Bain. I hate to admit it but if they’re going to go this hard on us in this game of chess perhaps the best way to beat them is with brute force.”

“Dallas might agree, and honestly I do too.”

Joy finally cuts in, “I’m not going to beat around the bush. Your hunch about the server was right, they set up all of that info meaning everything is potentially tainted. I agree, this is insanity. Whoever this is he’s well connected and a real fucking bastard and I’m sick of his shit. I’m sick of watching my friends get put in danger like this.” 

“We should talk to Bain when I can get up.”

“Yeah! I’m done with this guy, we should be playing by our own fucking rules.”, Sydney responds.You and Joy both agree. It goes quiet for a little while, you try to use this time to rest and doze off for a bit. 

A little later you’re awoke by excitement from Sydney and Joy, Houston is back up. You roll back over and listen for a bit as they discuss what happened. Houston and Dallas got jumped initially and were the first warning something was up. They got separated in the fight and Dallas came out pretty okay, but Houston got the shit stabbed out of him.

You take a moment to look outside and realize how late it is, it’s dark out and Jacket still isn’t awake. After the commotion Sydney heads upstairs and leaves Joy behind. 

You turn to look at him, “Hey Houston, glad you’re okay.”

“Y/n? They got to you too.”

“Yeah...” You look over at Jacket for a moment and Houston follows your gaze.

“Jesus… I’m sorry.”

You nod in response as you hear Dallas come back downstairs and sit down next to Hoxton.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, I’ll be fine.”

“Good, don’t want to lose your ass. You’re our best driver.”

“I’ll be good as new in no time to ferry your slow ass around.” Houston and Dallas laugh at each other. This must be Dallas’ way of saying he was worried, you bet he’d never tell Houston he was pacing over him until given something to do.

At this point you can see upstairs everyone coming out of the office, they aren’t somber anymore. If anything everyone looks pissed. It looks like the sentiment isn’t just shared by you, Joy and Sydney. Everyone is done with this guys shit.

Duke makes his way downstairs, looks like he’ll be making sure you all get rest. He does a quick check of everyone and stops at you, “Clover and Sydney told me what you’ve been like today. I don’t want any problems out of you, got it?”

“Yeah, I know…”

“Got it?” He takes a sterner tone with you.

“... Got it.”

\--------------------------------------------------------

A few hours pass, you barely get any sleep. You keep waking up over and over checking in on Jacket. You know you’ll probably get awoken by the noise if it happens but you can’t help yourself. Every so often in the dark you can hear a frustrated Joy, still awake figuring out what’s up with the server.

Eventually you see the sun begin to rise when you see Duke do a round to take a look over everyone again, he stops at Joy first. “You should get some rest, if you take a break and come back with a fresh mind you might make more progress.”

She looks up at him initially angry then sighs, “You’re right, I’ll go get some sleep…” You see her pack everything up and head for the garage and around the corner.

He makes his way to Jacket and takes a moment before coming over to you. “He’s in a better state, it’s just a matter of time before he wakes up.” He puts Jacket’s cassette player on your chest. You examine it for a moment and rewind it a little bit then hit play. “Please remember to breathe.”

Houston looks over, “Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask. How long have you two been a thing?”

You look over, “Remember when I got stabbed? Like right after that.”

“Ah, I figured it out the first time you went out to smoke and kissed. I spotted you two and figured that wasn’t my business.”

“Huh, thanks for that.” Things go quiet again, you rewind the cassette again. Click, “Please remember to breathe.” You take a deep breath, roll over and finally get a little bit of sleep.

\--------------------------------------------------------

When you awake the next time it’s the early afternoon and you can see someone next to Jacket. You sit up partially to get a better look and realize it’s the doctor who treated your stab wound from before but something about his behavior is weird. You watch him quietly, he looks nervous as he’s checking in on Jacket. You see him go to fiddle with something in the bag and then see the sloppy toss. He dropped something under the couch, trying to be casual about it. 

Your heart rate spikes, he’s the one who’s been planting all these isn’t he? You sit up the rest of the way and the pain hits you hard. You grip your side but still try to push yourself up, by this point Rust is guarding you guys and walks over. “Hey, kid! What’d I tell you?”

You take the chance and grab Rust and pull him closer to you and whisper to him, “The doctor just dropped something under the couch, I swear to god. I want you to go and check because it was really suspicious.” Rust looks at you surprised for a moment then nods and heads over towards Jacket.

“Hey, how’s he doing?”

“Good, it’ll be a little while before he wakes up.”

“Sure, anything we can do to help speed that up?” Rust takes the moment to come down to his level. He gets visibly more nervous at this and you can see him get a little flustered.

“Uh, n-not really he just needs to sleep for a w-while.” Rust reaches under the couch and retrieves a listening device from under it and grabs him. 

“Hey, how fucking long have you been working for him?”

“Please don’t hurt me!”

“Oh no, that’s not my job.” Rust slams him down into the floor as others start to arrive, Wick is first.

“Rust, what’s going on?”

“This fucker was planting a listening device.” He holds it up and shows it to Wick as others file in trying to figure out what’s happening and see this. Rust zip-ties him and passes him off to Wick and Wolf at this point. “I’ve got to bring this to Clover and Bain, Sydney keep an eye on them for me for a bit. Hey kid, good catch.” He nods at you then heads upstairs as Sydney takes his place to keep watch.

Houston looks over to you, “Thanks for keeping an eye out, I didn’t even catch it. Also smart to make Rust come to you.”

“Got lucky and have a different angle. Also I didn’t intend to pull Rust to me, I was intending to get up and deal with him myself.”

“Either way glad you’re keeping an eye out for us.”

“Fuck, like I have anything better to do right now Houston?” You try to put on a fake confidence but all you can think about is the possibility he’s hurting Jacket more than helping him. The conversation goes quiet again, you see Joy make her way back in from the garage and sit back down to get to work. You spend a little while fiddling with the cassette player, replaying audio over and over again to try to calm down.

About an hour passes quietly when you see Sydney look surprised for a moment and head over to Jacket, “Hey! He’s waking up.” You go to sit up and you see him grab Sydney with an awful lot of force. “Hey, hey, it’s just me. You’re okay!” 

It takes him a moment but he lets go of her and goes to sit up. “Fuck, not this again. Lay down, you still need to heal.” Sydney sounds exasperated but she can’t really do a lot as Jacket easily resists her and gets up to look around and spots you sitting up.

“You’re just as bad as them…” She heads up stairs to go and get Rust. Jacket on the other hand gets up and walks over to you then checks himself really quick. 

“Oh. It’s on ‘Fox, please follow’.” You hold out his cassette player and he takes it and smiles at you. You smile at him and he leans down and kisses you, he tries to hide it but he winces a bit as he does so. He sits down on the couch next to yours and lays down to rest near you. You hear him rewind the cassette for a second then a click, “Fox, Thank you.”

At this point you hear Rust and Sydney coming down the stairs and you lay back down.

“Oh good, they’re both back down again…”

“Good, I don’t have to fight them. You two kids need to fucking stay down from now on, got it?”

You laugh a bit, “Fine, I don’t have to worry anymore so I’ll gladly stay down.”

“Good, I don’t fucking want to hear one more complaint about this.” He makes his way towards the basement, “I’m going to check in on Wolf, you kids fucking rest for once.”

Houston pipes up, “Why is he addressing us as kids? I haven’t been a problem once.”

Sydney laughs, “Want a golden star for good behavior huh?”

You smile and reach your hand out, Jacket notices and reaches up and takes it. You spend the next little while recounting what you and everyone else know, the bad information, the trap and filling him in on what he might not remember of the other night along with the doctor downstairs. He quietly listens and once in a while Houston and Sydney interject to add in details from their perspectives. 

Everyone’s relieved, the safehouse feels a little less tense and worried now that everyone’s awake. After some rest it’s time to plot your retaliation.


	18. Return Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You get some well deserved rest and Bain has some plans in motion but it's just not enough.

Over the next few days not much happens, just rest and a lot of common room talk. Dallas and Clover seem to have disappeared, you figure they’re probably up in the office doing important shit but you’re not sure what that means. Rust, Sangres and Wolf have been out late the last two nights, they’re info gathering you know that one for sure. 

There’s two things saving you from the brink, eventually things get lax and you get some time to cuddle with Jacket. The other one being you and Houston have something in common, theft.

You sit up, “So like, Gensec has two main in house brands, this is discounting the independents whose designs they buy. The “Masterpiece” Collection and the “Nouveau” Collection.” You initially say this while looking at Jacket to make sure he’s caught up on what you’re talking about. You turn to Houston at this point, “Their best is for sure the Masterpiece, they’re all manual locks and their current lead designer is a goddamn genius.”

Houston responds, “Oh yeah, I’d rather have a manual that takes a long ass time to get through then one of those fucking digital locks from the Nouveau collection. Some of them have the same locking mechanisms but like the difference is the stupid digital entry methods. Fingerprint scanner? Just take their finger or kidnap, retina scans too. And codes you just need to be smart enough to get it.”

“Oh yeah, of course. I’ve had some beastly ones that took ages of repeated hiding and restarting because the guard rotations were so aggressive and the lock was so nasty. What’s his name again?”

“Serrurier? I think? Yeah no, we had one of those that was so bad we just stole the whole ass safe.”

“Fuck dude, like I’ve had that but with smaller ones. How big was this one?”

“We needed a helicopter.”

“Shit.” 

Jacket is sort of just watching you two talk at this point and looks at you curious. “Hm? Uh… Is this why I know this?” He nods in response. “Safe cracking isn’t my full specialty, it’s just being unnoticed. However when I can get a hold of newer model safes as they come out I ‘publish’ techniques on how to crack them for other criminals.”

“Oh, that’s you then. Your consumer and store grade ones are great, I love that you highlight good weak points for those who drill or blast. Makes my job much easier.”

“Thank you, I try.”

You guys see Rust come downstairs, “Hey, Bain said I’m allowed to let you guys run off and do whatever you want. Houston, Bain wants a meeting.” Houston gets up a little gingerly and heads upstairs. You and Jacket get up and head to the basement stairs when Rust stops you. “Hey, you both are going down there?”

“Yeah, why?”

“No reason.” Rust looks away at this and heads into the garage. You both look at each other confused and head downstairs. You make your way into Jacket’s room, Jacket closes the door as you sit down on the couch. Jacket heads over and changes tapes at his workbench before coming over and sitting down. You hear a click, “You could have died.”

“I’m aware… but you could’ve died.” You both sit quietly for a moment until you decide to break the silence. “I’m sorry.” You move closer and caress his face, he reaches out and pulls you close holding you tightly. You’ve never felt him like this before, but you can tell you feel the same way. You were both afraid to lose one another. Jacket leans back and you curl up on him gently, it’s going to be okay.

\--------------------------------------------------------

A few hours pass before there’s a bang on the fencing, you and Jacket sit up only to hear Rust from the other side. “Bain wants you two.” You both look at each other for a moment and get up. You come around the corner with Jacket just behind changing cassettes, “Yup.”

Rust gives you both a weird look as you open the door and pass him then head upstairs. You guys head into the office and look to the laptop and hear a sigh from it.

“Okay, things have gone wrong and I’m sorry you guys got put into that kind of danger.”

Click, “It’s alright.”

“No, you’re fine. Kinda comes with the job.”

“No, we should’ve been more careful. I should’ve been going through and re-vetting more of the people who work for us. I should’ve caught this and I’m sorry.”

“Again, not a big deal. Comes with the territory of what’s going on right now.” Jacket nods at this.

“So, he wasn’t the only one Vauban had working against us. It turns out a good bit of our supply chain was bugging things. We’ve found what we think is everything at this point, but it gave us an interesting lead we’re following. We might know where Libra is for sure since he’s the one messing with our supply chain and who blackmailed one of our doctors.”

“Oh?”

“I won’t say too much for safety of course but we do have some of us doing a bit of infiltration right now.” Now you know where Dallas and Clover are.

“Good, I want some fucking revenge.”

There’s a rewind and a Click, “Agreed.”

“You and everyone else, we all want a chance at these bastards. Don’t worry though, I’ll involve you both. I want you both to rest, no forcing yourself into training, no going out and doing something stupid. I told Houston the same thing.”

“Mhm, so we just go rest and that’s it. Got it. Anything else?”

“Nope, just take care until we have something concrete. Also stay out of Joy’s way, she’s been a bit on edge while working on that server.”

“Good to know. Stay safe Bain.”

He laughs nervously, “Same to you.” 

You and Jacket head out to the top of the stairs and you turn to him. “So, I’ll catch up to you later. I want to go through what we have right now just in case I missed something. Is that okay?” He nods in response and heads downstairs, you head into your room and start going through what you know and what we have on Vauban when you reconsider the nightclub aspect. If they favor nightclubs for dealing, you have a good contact for that. 

You decide to get in contact with an old friend. She responds immediately, you just send a general message asking her to keep an eye out for guys who look like the gang members. You warn her not to engage them and just tell you if they start frequenting her joint. She says she hasn’t noticed but she has had an uptick in drug deals at her club, she’ll keep an eye out tonight.

After that you spend some time looking through what files Bain has left for you at this point, there’s really not a lot more on the gang than you already knew. Houston was a burglar, you already knew that considering your conversations over the last few days. He seems good, just anxious. A little ways in you get a message from Bain.

“I know you and I both know I told Houston something else.”

“I know, it doesn’t matter because it’s not my business.”

“Good, I don’t want to see you follow through on it or anything.”

“I wasn’t going to? Instead I asked a contact if they could spot gang activity for me.”

“Oh… I uh, expected you to be more nosey.”

“Nope, I have to trust you guys at this point. If you wanted me dead I’d have been dead day one and you guys still dragged my corpse back here after the other night. You must like me.”

“Fair enough.”

At this point you head out and spot Joy on the couches still working, you head over and sit next to her for a minute. “Hey, you had anything to eat yet today?”

“No, working.” She doesn’t even look at you, she just continues focusing.

You get up at this and head upstairs to get her something to eat, Duke and Houston are up there discussing Sokol and Dragan’s general downstairs fights. You quietly microwave something and bring it downstairs to Joy and place it next to her. She doesn’t respond or even go to take it, you decide to sit on the nearby couch and just sort of keep an eye on her.

Sydney walks over at this point and sits next to you, “She’ll eat eventually as long as the food is there, I’m more worried about how little she’s slept in the last few days.”

“Yeah, no that’s fair. Though most of this safehouse hasn’t slept well for a few days.”

“True.” The two of you look at each other a little concerned before Sydney tries to change the subject. “So, I hear you and Houston bonded.” 

“Uh, yeah. Mutual theft buddies I guess.”

“That’s good, you spend way too much time with Jacket.”

“I… You know why.”

“Oh, I know. You’re a fucking mess around him and I don’t quite get it.”

“I dunno he’s nice.” She looks taken aback by this.

“Bain literally chose him to babysit you because if you’d been a traitor he would’ve killed you without hesitation. You’ve seen what he does to people on his bad side, he tortures people for fun!”

“And I help sometimes, I mean yeah he does it more up close and personal but you guys do some not cool stuff too.”

“I asked him my first heist to take out a camera guy and he beat the man into a bloody pulp before turning the cameras off.”

“Yeah, but he did his job, he listened. He can communicate without words well, he’s good at stealth surprisingly considering how big he is. Like I dunno? He’s great to work with, he has jokes, we can connect pretty well.”

At this point Duke is leaning on the railing above, “Sydney, they’re really good at keeping Jacket under control. From what I know of our botched heist he didn’t turn it into a bloodbath which is an improvement in my books.”

“You have a point…” Sydney is now thinking this over. You look kind of uncomfortable for a moment before Joy steps in.

“Honestly Jacket’s violent nature may be a boon with things the way they are right now, even if it’s hard to deal with and limits what kinds of missions we can take him on. Right now his skill set is exactly what we need, along with Wolf and a few others. We need to be able to question and torture people, intimidate and break fights. That’s Jacket’s forte.”

Duke smiles, “She’s right, and once this all blows over as long as we bring ‘Fox’ with us we can take Jacket on more missions. It’s a win win.”

Houston cuts in, “Don’t let Rust hear that, he’s going to throw a fit if he finds out any of us are considering asking Bain to let them stay.” You’re a little surprised at this.

“Uh, hey. Is this a thing? How many of you are considering it?” You laugh a little nervously at this.

Duke laughs a bit, “Oh, jumping at the chance to stay around Jacket huh? Well, I know discussions have been had from a few members about you staying including him. He wants you to stay really badly apparently.” 

It’s around this point in time Jacket comes back upstairs and spots you and smiles a little. You hear Duke as you get up, “Speak of the devil.”

You make a B-line for him and he comes up to meet you, you smile at him then kiss him. He’s initially surprised but reciprocates quickly. When you pull away you’re smiling widely and blushing a little. He’s smiling a lot too and for the first time you see his cheeks turn a little pink. You laugh a little at this, “Now there’s something I haven’t seen before.” You reach up and caress his face and run your thumb across his cheek only for him to look away from you and come back with a straight face. You laugh again, “You can’t hide that from me, I already saw it.”

You and he walk over to relax on the couch next to each other, you see Joy eating at this point which is comforting. It’s not back to the way it was before, it probably won’t be for a long time but the safehouse is starting to feel a lot more like home.

\--------------------------------------------------------

You and Jacket spend the next few days resting back up, as much as you’d rather be working there’s not much to do and nobody will give you work. You’ve stopped trying to be quiet about your relationship, it was pointless to hide it before anyway. It’s much nicer to be able to feel free to kiss him, and hold him wherever you want. It feels so easy and comes so naturally to the both of you, even if once in a while you get a weird look from Rust.

You finally also get a response, her nightclub has had a few of them here and there but there’s one regular who has that tattoo. He doesn’t hide it and he’s a real talkative bastard apparently. Good to know. Finally Bain calls you up, you pass Rust as you enter and he looks at you strangely.

“So, it’ll still be a bit more down time. Not to say you both haven’t rested enough, it’s just that we need more time.”

“Fair, but I have something. Using a very well trusted source I know where there’s a hot shot drug dealer in the chain who’s been running his mouth off at a club.”

“How well can you trust them?”

“With my life.”

He laughs, “I dunno, you trusted us with your life.”

“Fair, but she’s good and I know she would never betray me.” 

He goes quiet for a moment, “Look, I know you’re itching to get back in on this but we can’t just rush.”

“This isn’t rushing, this is one of the few people I would trust with everything.” You won’t back down.

“No, we need to play what we have.”

“... Fine.”

“Either way, we’ve got Dallas and Clover right now getting us info on Libra. It won’t be too long before we have something so just sit tight. Got it?”

“I got it, don’t worry.”

“I’m sure you and Jacket can keep each other plenty busy.” You turn red at this.

“True, I’ll just head back down and spend some time with him. But thank you for the update.”

“No problem, stay safe.” 

You nod and head downstairs hot with anger, we need to attack and not play passive. You make your way into the basement and over to Jacket’s room where you see him playing games, you pass the threshold and close the door for once. He looks over at you confused, you come over and sit down on the couch. You move in closer to him and keep your voice down, “I have a lead I want to follow, but Bain won’t let me. Would you like to help me?” 

He nods in response. “I have a friend, who works in a nightclub and I asked her to look out for the types of guys we’re looking for. She says she has one that’s real talkative and doesn’t hide his status at all. I say we pay him a visit, I know they’ll turn a blind eye to our activity. How does tonight sound?” You see him think it over quickly and he nods again. “You know you don’t have to.”

You see him rewind a bit and then click, “I want to.”

“Fair enough.”

\--------------------------------------------------------

You both wait for night to fall before heading out, both quietly packing and heading out past Joy’s van. The plan is to not take major easy to read pathways and just hop the wall back there and head uphill then steal a car. As you guys get out you find Sydney leaning against the wall, “Bain told me to keep an eye out for you leaving tonight to follow some lead.”

You and Jacket both look at each other and then at her, “I don’t want to fight with you Sydney. I just want to go possibly get answers.”

“So do I.”

Joy hops out of her van and tosses a bag to Sydney, “And if we travel as a party we’re safer.”   
You see Houston follow her out of the van and start to climb the wall. “I’ve got a car ready nearby, let’s get going before Rust or anyone else notices we’re not at our posts.” You nod and follow as the 5 of you climb up and head uphill towards a van Houston had ready for you guys. If anything, you’re pleased to know that the three of them feel the same way. It’s time to turn the tables on these bastards.


	19. On The Attack

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You, Jacket, Houston, Joy and Sydney make your way to the nightclub to follow up on your info.

You arrive, it’s late at night and the nightclub is pretty full. Joy passes out independent comms to you all so Bain can’t listen in. You turn to the rest of the group, “I’m going to go in with Jacket. I need to make contact but I also don’t want to go in alone just in case. We can just play the relationship card after all. After that we’ll plan from there and I’ll make contact via comms, got it?” There’s a unanimous agreement in the van. You look at Jacket and both shed your bags and head in together, as a couple. 

The bouncer stops you for a moment, looks you over then nods and lets the two of you in. You make a b line for the bar and get the bartender's attention. She looks at you and comes over, “What does he drink?” You look to Jacket who shakes his head. 

“I guess he doesn’t today.” She laughs and brings you a rum and coke along with a note on a napkin, you drink and read the note quickly. It says he’s out back making a drug deal and he’s been really heavily sought after tonight. It also tells you which exit it is, it’s the one between this one and an empty building next door, convenient. You put your drink down, turn and look at Jacket and smile. He smiles back before she comes back over, “So, how’ve things been?”

“Oh y’know. Business as usual, how are the kids?”

“Great! The oldest just started middle school.”

“Fuck yeah, never thought he’d make it.” You both laugh a bit at this. “I’m sorry I have business tonight, y’know? We’ll catch up another time when things aren’t hectic.”

She smiles and nods, “It’s fine, I’m just glad to know you’re okay since y’know…”

“Of course, you get back to work and play pretend. We can handle this.” She smiles and nods and walks off. You flip the napkin and write a simple message. “Thanks for the help, take the kids out for ice cream on me.” You leave a 30 dollar tip with the message and finish your drink then head to a quieter alcove in the club. You make comms contact quickly, “He’s doing deals right now, he’s in the alley between this one and the empty building next door. You guys get in there quickly, we’re going to drag him in there.”

Sydney responds, “Got it, we’ll be ready in no time.”

You both stay in the alcove for a bit, you smile and flirt with Jacket, he goes along with it of course. As much as it is you both pretending to look good, it’s legitimately you two flirting with each other. You finally get the good to go from Joy and you both head towards the exit where he’s been. 

You wait for a minute or so to let the previous clients leave before heading out there. It’s he and two guards, you both don’t beat around the bush and you kick out the piece of wood they were using to hold the door open as you both come out. Jacket goes for one of the guards first immediately punching him and going in for the kill. You throw a knife at the second guard and while he’s reeling from the pain move in low and quick. You catch him and throw him over your shoulder and prep another knife and turn to the dealer. “Don’t you fucking move, or else.”

He puts his hands up as he hears a series of cracks from behind him from the one Jacket is handling. You step on the guy who you have downed to make sure he stays down for the time being and Jacket grabs the dealer from behind and chokes him out. You put away your throwing knife and pull out an actual blade, lean down and slit the second guards throat. You walk over and knock on the door into the empty building as Jacket breaks both of the dealers arms then picks him up. 

Sydney and Houston open the door and Jacket throws him unceremoniously through the doorway, Houston and Sydney pick him up at this point to move him further in while you two quickly hide the bodies in a nearby dumpster.

You both head in and follow them up to the second floor where Joy is in a room they’ve prepared admittedly hastily. It’s just a chair and some recording equipment. They both drag him into the chair and tie him down then head out to stand guard in the hallway. 

You look at Joy, “You sure you want to stay in here?” Jacket tilts his head and looks at her too.

“I’ll be fine, how bad could it be?” You both look at each other then at Joy again.

“Joy, it can get rough in here and we can be kind of… hard to sit through." 

"This is what we do, we're criminals."

"If you're sure…" 

It takes some time but he finally wakes up to you and Jacket standing over him.

"So, tell us who your boss is and how to find them." He stays quiet, and Jacket punches him. "Boss, now." He continues to stay quiet and you reach down and pull out a knife. You pass it to Jacket and he brings it down into his leg, he yells out in response. "Boss, where? Now.”

He continues to refuse and you grab the knife and twist, he yells out again. "Information! Now!" He continues to refuse and Jacket grabs the knife and pulls it down as much of his leg as he can. Cutting through to the bone all the way down just past the knee. He screams in response, Jacket pulls the knife back out and goes for the second leg when you stop him. You let him catch his breath and ask one more time. “Information, tell us what you fucking know.”

He’s bleeding profusely, and looks at his own flayed open leg horrified before looking up at you both. “Well? We can do this again.”

Jacket sures his grip on the knife and stabs it into his other leg and he finally cracks, “WAIT WAIT! I can tell you who I work for. I work for Gemini!”

“Not good enough. Where is Gemini?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Can’t or won’t?” You grab Jacket’s hand and push the knife into him harder. He yells out again and you let go giving him a moment to breathe.

“Well?” He stays silent. “Won’t, got it.” Jacket grabs one of his already broken arms and breaks it in a second place with a crack. He yells out again and you kick he and the chair over and you both step forward to stand over him. “So?” He’s breathing heavily and you both look at each other, he’s still not answering. “Y’know, he’s being nice. I’ve already stopped him from being much crueler. If you’d like I can leave you in a room with him alone.”

Click, “I’d like that.”

He looks at you both terrified and starts painfully struggling against his bindings. You crouch down next to him, pull the knife out of his leg then bring it close to his throat and look him in the eye. "Look, I know you know where Gemini is. I'm going to ask you one last time where he is, okay?"

"I can't say…" you take a deep breath and exhale.

"Joy, you sure you want to be in here." She looks white as a sheet at this point and shakes her head. "Head on out, we've got this." She nods and heads out to be with Houston and Sydney. 

You step back, throw the knife into the wooden floor where it sticks in and Jacket opens his bag behind you. "The good news is I won't be leaving the room, the bad news is I don't care how bad he hurts you as long as you don't die. He's all yours." You smile at him as he passes you while you step back and lean against the wall. 

The next hour is filled with the sounds of a pleading man and his agony as Jacket throws him around like he’s nothing easily breaking bones. You feel your heartbeat speed up once in a while but you take a breath to calm it, you want in but you know it’s better this way.

At about the hour and a half mark you hear it, “I’ll tell you anything, just please make him stop.” He’s covered in blood at this point, unable to even crawl towards you. You smile and put a hand out to stop Jacket as he moves in again, he yields of course. 

You crouch down next to him, “So?”

“Gemini owns 4 big nightclubs downtown, they visit all of them throughout the week randomly. Nirvana, Backstreets, The Beach and Club Orchid. Please, just stop.”

“Anything else?”

“There’s more than one of them… Gemini that is… It’s two people...” He says weakly. 

You smile at this point and crouch down next to him, taking the knife out of the floor, “Thank you. You should’ve led with that, would’ve saved all of us a lot of trouble.” You lift the knife and hear him plead for a moment before slitting his throat and standing up. You look at Jacket who nods and you both stop the recording and start packing things up. You head out as soon as you’re done and meet Joy, Houston and Sydney in the hallway.

Sydney looks at you both, “Got what we needed?”

“Yup, let’s head home. I’m sure Bain’s well and awake and knows we’re gone. So be ready for the shit storm that comes with that.”

“We have a damn good reason to be out here though, they should know that more than anyone.” Houston and Joy nod at this before heading out. You guys make your way back out to the van. On the car ride you fill them in with what you know about Gemini.

Houston responds first, “So more than one person, they frequent a series of clubs. We’ll just watch all of them and be ready.”

“Yeah, that’ll be much easier then checking every fucking nightclub in this city.” Sydney replies. For a moment it’s quiet and you hear Houston again.

“Shit, we’re being tailed, hang on I’m going to try and lose them.” He accelerates and starts taking an erratic pattern around the section of the city you’re in. Whoever it is they won’t seem to stop following you guys and at this point they’re not even hiding it. 

Sydney climbs out of the passenger seat and into the back. “Like hell am I going to let these bastards get their way.” She cracks the door and pulls the pin on a grenade and lobs it out timing it just right to land under their car and blow it out. Houston speeds up a bit at this and you help her close the doors again, “Step on it before the police arrive.”

Joy laughs, “Like they’ll get there in time, I have all cell signal in a radius of our van snubbed. Anyone who calls the cops before we leave a certain range is going to have to use a landline.”

You smile at her, “Good thinking Joy, that’s kinda great. It lets you get away with shit like that.”

Sydney laughs, “Good. I wasn’t about to let those bastards follow us home or menace us. I’m done playing soft with these types.”

You breathe a sigh of relief and look at Jacket, he looks a little relieved too and smiles at you. You smile back and wait out the car ride, a little ways away Houston slows back down and you work your way back to the safehouse. When you arrive he parks on the hill again and you guys make your way down the hill to the little courtyard where Joy’s van is. Rust and Hoxton are already waiting for you guys there, and they look pissed.

Houston’s the first to get down the wall with you close behind, you’re both met by Hoxton. “Dallas is going to fucking kill you when he gets back, and you. What were you thinking dragging everyone else into your stupid fucking plan?”

“We tagged along, they didn’t ask us to do shit for them.”, Sydney says as she climbs down. “We want answers as bad as everyone else and we’ve spent ages playing this stupid game of chess with him matching every move we make.”

Rust steps in, “That doesn’t excuse this kind of shit, you’ve been here fucking long enough to know better. And you!” He moves towards you and Jacket drops down and puts his arm out in front of you.

Click, “Biker.” 

Joy hops down, “Stop fighting, we have answers. We know how to find Gemini.”

Rust is staring down Jacket at this point when Houston cuts in, “Let’s talk about this inside. I don’t want anyone overhearing considering recent events. Let’s talk with Bain as well instead of leaving him in the dark.”

Rust finally backs down but only to go inside, Jacket stays between you and Rust as you guys head into the safehouse and upstairs to the office. You all file in and hear Bain finally.

“So, I know Fox started this. How did all of you get roped into this?”

Click, “I was asked.”

“Of course, and the rest of you?”

Sydney looks annoyed, “You asked me to look out for them leaving the safehouse, and I did. I agreed we should follow this lead and take a chance so I went with them to make sure they were both safe.”

“And everyone else?”

Joy and Houston look at each other for a moment and Houston speaks first, “I was talking with Sydney and she told me what she was doing and I decided I wanted to come with.”

Joy looks away, “Ditto.”

You hear an exasperated sigh out of Bain, “All of you know better, every one of you know better than to run off when we’re in this kind of danger. People are watching our safehouse, they know where we are.”

Sydney steps in at this point, “But we’re just sitting here wasting time and playing by their expectations. Vauban, Leo, whatever or whoever this is what they’re expecting us to do! Keep playing passive and giving up space. We need to hit them hard!”

“That doesn’t excuse reckless behavior!”

“We’ve already talked to you about how we feel and you didn’t want to listen. You want to keep doing the same infiltration quiet shit over and over again. Well guess what Bain, we got fucking answers!”

Joy pulls out the recording equipment you guys used.

“Yeah, we have answers and you could’ve all put yourselves at risk and fucked all of us over!”

As Bain and Sydney argue Joy pulls up the recording section where he tells you guys what he knows and plays it and the room goes quiet. 

“So?”

“Gemini owns 4 big nightclubs downtown, they visit all of them throughout the week randomly. Nirvana, Backstreets, The Beach and Club Orchid. Please, just stop.”

“Anything else?”

“There’s more than one of them… Gemini that is… It’s two people...”

The recording stops and the room sits in silence for a moment before Bain finally speaks up. 

“I want you all to go to bed, and if I find out you’ve left the safehouse without my permission again I will consider you our enemy and a traitor. Do you understand me?”

You all nod and go to leave, Hoxton stays behind with the recording and Bain while Rust follows you guys out. You all look at each other and head downstairs going your separate ways for the night except for you and Jacket. You both go to head downstairs when Rust grabs you by your shoulder and stops you. “No, since you two fucking scheme I want you two to stay away from each other.”

You look at Jacket who looks back at you, Rust gets even angrier at this and grabs you by the collar, “I’m going to tell you the truth, the only reason I apologized to you and said I trusted you was so Bain would leave me alone. I still don’t trust you and haven’t this whole time and honestly, after this stunt? I think you threw that guy under the fucking bus to protect yourself.” 

Jacket moves in on Rust and you put your hand out and touch his arm, he stops and looks down at your hand and looks up at Rust. Rust realizes something is going on and looks down too and sees where your hand is. 

You speak up, “You don’t want us to hang for a bit, then you don’t want us to hang for a bit. Fine, we’ll comply. Isn’t that right Jacket?” 

He stays quiet for a moment before you hear a rewind and a click, “Agreed.”

Rust lets go of you and you head into your room for the night, Jacket heading into the basement and Rust back into the garage. You don’t like agreeing to what he wants but if it’ll keep him appeased then it’s not a big deal. You lay down in bed and stare at the ceiling, but you know you can’t sleep, not after tonight.


	20. Difficulties

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You get scolded by Bain.

The next morning you’ve had almost no sleep, but you get up and head out anyway. Joy and Sydney are on the couch, Sydney watching as Joy works on the server. Jacket is standing at the base of the stairs as you come down, he watches you and reaches out for you as you reach the base of the stairs. You ignore him, it feels awful to do so but as you come down you turn and spot Rust in the garage watching, it’s better this way. You walk over and sit down on the other couch and watch them work for a while.

Eventually Houston comes downstairs and looks at the four of you, “So, which one of you is going to go get yelled at next?”

Sydney stands up, “I’ll take my lumps just to get it over with.” She heads upstairs and Houston takes her place next to Joy and watches her work. Time passes, Sydney comes down and she gestures upstairs. "Next?"

Jacket heads upstairs and Sydney sits down next to you. You feel anxious and worried about what's coming when Sydney puts her hand on your shoulder. "Don't worry, it's not that bad. Bain's yelled at me like this before. He's more worried than anything else."

You take a deep breath, "Look that obvious huh?"

"I heard what happened last night with you three. Honestly I think you should ignore him and just keep hanging out. He'll get over it."

"No, I said I wouldn't so I'm going to follow through. No matter what."

She looks concerned at this, "Fox, you can't hide it and how it makes both of you feel, just ignore Rust and y’know…”

At this point Rust walks over, “Sydney, stay out of this. It’s not your fucking business.” She gives Rust a dirty look and he walks downstairs into the basement.

A little while later Jacket comes down and you stand up and pass him heading upstairs. He touches your arm as you pass and you just keep walking, it feels terrible and makes your heart ache. You don’t have time for that right now, you head up into the office and take a deep breath.

“I’m not angry at you for getting information, or for being right. I’m angry at you because you put others in danger, even if they chose to go with you. I’m angry at you for not listening to me or not trying to push me again or at that point not coming to me as a group.” You stay quiet through this, he’s right. You should’ve talked to others too but you didn’t, leading to them waiting for you.

“I’m happy that we have more information and you got us what we have, we’re following up on it and it seems good. But I need you to understand that as much as nobody will admit it out loud this is a family. We need to communicate and work together, and yeah you worked together but none of us knew where you were. You could’ve died and we would never have known where you were or how. You guys may have a point, I’ve been playing very close to the chest out of fear of losing everything we have. But on the other hand being reckless like you all were last night is how you get everyone killed.”

“You’re right, and I’m sorry.”

There’s a moment of silence before he speaks again, “I heard about what Rust said, through Sydney. I’m going to have a talk with him about it later after Joy.” 

“Okay…”

“Just stay clear of Rust if you can help it, I told Jacket the same but I can’t guarantee he’ll listen.”

“Alright.”

“I want you to promise me you won’t do that again, and you’ll talk to me or anyone else next time okay?”

“I promise.” 

“Good. Send in Joy, she’s the last one.”

You nod and head downstairs and look at her from above, “Hey, Joy. You’re next.”

She puts her stuff down and gets up, “Yeah, I figured as much. Time to get scolded.” You both pass each other on the stairs as you go to sit down with Sydney and Houston.

Sydney is the first to speak, “Don’t worry he means it in his own loving way.” You nod in response but stare off into space, you’re more worried about earlier. Jacket’s not even down here anymore, he’s probably in the basement.

It stays quiet for a bit before you hear Houston, “It’s Jacket isn’t it?”

Sydney looks at you then to Houston then back to you and smiles, “Awwwww! That’s cute! You’re worried about him more than you!”

“I was really cold towards him, okay? I feel like a bad person…”

Sydney laughs, “He can be cold towards everyone but I get what you mean. You two treat each other well and I’m sure it’s not a big deal. You worry too much.”

“Sydney, I just went from nobody has caught me ever to FBI wanted and hunted by some well connected dude and has nearly died at least once. All I can do is worry!”

She laughs at this again and Houston cuts in, “I get what you mean, as much as I hate to say it but in this gang you gotta roll with the punches. Trust me, if I could plan out every bank heist and have perfect information I would.” 

Sydney nods at this and you see her turn to look at the basement. You and Houston follow her gaze and see Rust coming out of the basement with a bloody nose and looking like he got out of a fight. Rust glares at you for a moment as he passes then heads into the bathroom and you all look at each other confused.

A little later Joy finally comes down, she sits back down and gets back to work without so much as a greeting. A few minutes pass before Sydney stands up, “Alright, now that we’ve all pouted for a bit about getting yelled at by ‘Dad’ let’s get back to our lives. Come on Houston, I wanted to plan out a new paint job for the van.”

He gets up at this, “I just got it patched back up just right and the old paint back on!”

She shrugs, “New day, new paint.” He follows her into the garage and you see the two of them start debating color schemes aggressively. Joy isn’t really talking at this point so you decide to head upstairs. Someone you know must know something about these four bars, so you send a few messages out to people you know you can trust. While you wait for any messages you check out what Bain has. You flip through notes on gang members and nearby gang activity. Nothing too interesting, a lot of general drug activity and meet up spots but nothing too interesting.

You get your first response from your good contact from last night, she mentions one of the other bartenders who works there quit because she found out they were chill about letting human trafficking just happen at “The Beach”. Good to know.

The second response you get is from a contact you hadn’t heard from in a while, he mentions having someone who works for him right now who worked at Backstreets. He says he’ll ask them about what they know. You forward the initial Beach information to Bain.

**Thank you.  
Hey, I wanted to know how you can trust this source.**

You stop for a moment and question how much you’re willing to tell him.

_She and I are old friends, and some old friends are loyal to you no matter what. Y’know?_

**You don’t want to say, got it.**

_That obvious huh?_

**Yeah, I want to know for safety of course.**

_Her ex-husband was chief of police and involved in a lot of bad stuff as well as abusive. She wanted out and wanted the kids to live a better life so I killed him and aired his dirty laundry. She’s too good a person to live a life like that honestly and I already do so it just made sense._

**For being the kind of cold calculating type you try to say you are you sure have a heart of gold.**

_I don’t know if brutally murdering an abusive husband is heart of gold behavior._

**Fair enough.**

You lean back and wait for a while with no response from your contact, it’ll be a bit probably so you get up and head out. You can hear Bain and Rust having a fight in the office and decide to steer clear and head downstairs. It’s mid-afternoon but it’s overcast, Joy is sitting watching her computer carefully as it runs something, you sit next to her and watch as well. Without looking away she breaks the silence, “You don’t know what any of this means do you?”

“Nope. But I’m curious.”

“Okay, so basically I might have figured out the encryption and am about to decode what’s on it. It’s just taking its sweet ass time. I’m making sure not too many errors show up otherwise I’d have to shift some stuff around and restart this process again.”

“Okay. So you might have made a breakthrough?”

“Yeah, no. I might be about to get us everything on this server.”

Joy is getting more anxious the longer you both watch, you’re unsure what to look for when you hear someone coming from the basement. You turn and see Jacket, his face is bandaged up and you can see a few bruises peeking out from under his shirt. He looks angry as can be, your eyes meet and that anger fades for a second only to resurge and you watch him leave the safehouse. You look at Joy and she looks at you and you bolt up out of your seat and run for the door. “Tell Bain, I’m going after him.” For a moment before the door closes you look at her and she looks confused but you don’t have time for that. 

You turn and look both ways and see Jacket at the end of the block and run towards him, he’s walking fast and it’s hard for you to catch up. He seems like he’s actually trying to lose you but you won’t stop. He looks over his shoulder and sees you, the anger fades for a moment again and he turns back and he starts running. You’re having trouble keeping up already but this is too much, you manage to keep him visible at a distance for a few turns but you finally lose him. You’re standing out in the middle of the city, no idea where he is and what he’s doing. It begins to rain.


	21. Downpour

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You're on the hunt to find Jacket and make sure he's safe.

You start looking around, fruitlessly. You’re just hoping maybe you’ll find some sign of where he’s been but you can’t. You’re soaked and cold when you duck into an alleyway finally after a few minutes and start thinking. 

_If I were Jacket, from everything I know about him, what would I do? I’m angry. I want to get that out of me, I’m angry. I’m mad at Rust for treating us this way… I need to make things better, I need to take it out on someone. I don’t want to take it out on the person I like, they hurt too. I’m angry that they hurt, I’m hurt from how they treated me today. They were cold towards me, and distant. Because of Rust._

You pause for a moment and take a deep breath before continuing.

_I need to not focus on Rust, how do I get my bad feelings out? I hunt people I can hurt that nobody will care as much about. I hunt bad guys. Where are there bad guys near me?_

You remember the map from earlier vaguely but you can’t quite remember what it said. You remember a general area of a few of them and start to make your way to the closest one you can think of. A few blocks later you check things out, gang members milling about like usual. He hasn’t been here, yet. You give it a few and watch but no dice, so you make your way to the second one. The second one is all drugs, a convenience store false front, but again there’s nothing. You wait a little while once more but nothing happens so you move again, it’s a downpour by now.

Between locations you check alleys and look around and keep an eye out, hoping he’ll show back up or you’ll find him somewhere alone until finally you get to the third spot. It’s an apartment building, you remember the picture of the outside. Usually there’s people outside guarding but nobody is here, he’s here. You reach down and pull the knife out of your boot and make your way to a side entrance. It’s closed but not locked, you slowly open it surveying the first floor lobby. There’s four bodies, blood everywhere. You take a deep breath and exhale, he’s been through here for sure. 

You head up the first flight of stairs and find another hallway full of bodies. Caved in skulls, slashed off limbs, blood everywhere, you check the doorways and find rooms with bodies. All gang members, he’s on a bit of a rampage. You hear a few gunshots ring out two floors above you, there he is. You run up the stairs past much newer bodies and through a hallway littered with them, quickly peering into doorways as you go finding more victims of this killing spree. 

You get to the end of the hallway, a single doorway into a room, the door is mostly closed. You ready your knife and quietly push the door open slowly, initially revealed is blood and gore but as it swings the rest of the way open you see him. Jacket is on his knees at the back end of the room you can hear the wet cracks as he is wailing on what’s left of a thug. 

You take your first step into the room while holding the knife. As soon as your foot makes even a sound on the wooden floor he turns quickly ready to throw whatever he’s holding at you only to stop. He’s not wearing his usual mask, he’s wearing a tiger mask you recognize from being in his room. You keep your hands where he can see them and take another quiet step towards him. “Hey, are you okay?”

He gets up off of the guy and slowly turns to look directly at you, he’s covered in blood a good way up his body and you can’t see his eyes but you can feel his intense gaze. He approaches you slowly and as he does you realize he’s holding a pipe. He almost seems to be trying to resist moving towards you in how slow he’s moving, like he’s scared to get closer to you. You can feel something isn’t right, your heart is thumping hard in your chest and you take a step back. He stops moving for a moment and you both stare at each other unsure how to move or proceed. 

For a moment there’s only the two of you and the sound of your own breathing when you retake your step towards him. He tightens the grip on the pipe, you see this and stop again. You wait a few moments before taking your next step, there’s a pause and you see him drop the pipe and take the mask off. He’s still bandaged up and bruised but he’s Jacket. 

You smile at him and finally cross the room to meet him. Jacket holds his arms out and you both embrace, “Hey, are you okay?” He nods in response, he isn’t. 

“I’m sorry I was cold to you today.” You feel him hug you tighter. For a moment you just enjoy feeling him close to you again only to hear a bang from a few floors below. He lets go of you and picks the pipe back up. You head to the windows and check them, unlocked and there’s a fire escape. “We can leave this way.” He nods and you open the window and climb out quickly, he follows. You both get to the bottom of the fire escape and pull the ladder release when you hear a few gunshots from above, they had gotten there. For a moment as you both climb down you can see them trying to follow through the window. 

You get to the ground with Jacket right after you and start running, taking back alleys and alternate routes. Anything that’ll make people have to follow one at a time and slow them down. At some point during your run you can hear the police heading the opposite way, someone definitely heard the gunshots from earlier. 

You both run for a good long while before finally stopping in an alley to catch your breath. Jacket’s still covered in blood and you’re a good way away from the safehouse with no way to get a hold of Bain. You look up at him, “You know where there are spare safehouses everywhere in this city right?” He nods. “Is there one nearby?” He nods again and you start to follow him. “I know it’s a risk but we have no other option and we don’t really have a phone number, y’know?” He nods again while leading you. “I wish I’d brought stuff with me, I’d have more than a knife and you. Though we’ve survived scarier shit so y’know?” He nods again. 

A few blocks later he takes you to a ground floor side door into a small store. He opens the door and you both head in and find the back of the store decked out and reinforced for safety and full of supplies. You both get in and lock the door behind you and you start digging around, Jacket sits down on a couch at the back of the room and watches as you dig through boxes.

Ammo, spare weapons, medkits, alcohol, rations, batteries, this building is kitted out like it’s prepared to survive an apocalypse. 

_I guess if the safehouse goes under and we have everyone in the safehouse in here it would be an apocalypse…_

After a few minutes of fruitless searching Jacket gets off the couch, walks over past you to a shelf you hadn’t gotten to yet. He pulls a box off the middle shelf and hands it to you, you open it and it has spare comms. You breathe a sigh of relief and he heads back over and watches you get one up and running.

You get it on and put the earpiece in, “Bain! We’re okay.”

“Thank god! Where are you!”

“Uh… One of the safehouses, the one on 8th and 12th I think? It’s an old store back.”

“Alright, yeah. I know where you are. You guys got a good ways away, but you’re both okay? You’re sure?”

“Yeah, so far. I’ll radio in if anything happens.”

“Good, I’ll be sending a crew to come get you two. Just sit tight, it might be a few hours since the cops are swarming. Jacket made a mess from the sound of it.”

“Yeah.”

“Just stay put and radio in if anything happens. You guys should have plenty of weapons just in case anyone comes for you.”

“Yeah, we do. I’m sorry…”

“No, I’m glad you went after him. Just stay safe.”

“You too.”

The comms go down for now and you walk over and sit next to Jacket. “Hey, are you okay?” He looks at you and finally pulls the cassette player out of his pocket. You hear the whurr of the rewind and the click for play, “Yes.”

“You’re not, please don’t tell me that. Is it something I can help with?”

He looks down for a moment, he’s thinking. You reach out and touch his hand, he instinctively pulls away and you flinch responsively. The both of you look at each other for what feels like forever, all you can hear is both of your breathing and the rain. He breaks this and suddenly moves in hugging you tightly, you put your arms around him too and hold him just as tightly. 

A few minutes pass before you both finally let go and you run your hand down his arm. “Hey, come here.” You lean back and he curls up with his head on your chest for once. You put your arms around him and hold him, stroking his hair and listening to the rain.

\--------------------------------------------------------

A few hours pass before you hear someone at the door. The two of you disentangle quickly ready for a fight but it’s just Duke. You breathe a sigh of relief and kiss Jacket quickly then pat him on the shoulder, “Come on, let’s go home.” You start walking towards the door and he follows quickly. You both hop into the back where you meet Sydney and Hoxton, Houston is driving of course.

You smile because you’re glad to see everyone, “Oh, Hoxton. Surprised to see you outside of the office.”

“Yeah well, one of us has to make sure the kids stay safe.”

Duke laughs from the passenger seat, “You say that but I’m the designated adult here.”

“I’ve been with the gang longer than you, I have seniority!”

Sydney smiles, “Of course grandad, whatever you say.”

Hoxton makes a pouty face as a bit then laughs. “I’m just glad you’re both okay, I know Bain’ll probably be upset with Jacket but it’ll be fine. Trust me. If anything you did the right thing by chasing after him and getting him back somewhere safe where you could get back to us.”

“I just wanted to make sure he was okay, that last part was an afterthought admittedly.” You look up at him and smile, he smiles back. 

When you guys get back to the safehouse most people disperse where they tend to usually hang, Joy isn’t on the couch anymore. You wonder briefly if what she was doing worked. You and Jacket head into the office, you speak first. “Hey Bain, sorry this is two nights in a row.”

“I’m just glad you’re both okay. Jacket, I heard about what happened with you and Rust.”

He looks away, you figured they had both gotten into a fist fight but didn’t want to get into it.

“I know you didn’t start the fight, Wolf and Wick told me about it. But this, you should’ve stayed in. I have a question for you Fox, did you lose track of Jacket for even a second?”

You look down for a moment, “Yeah, I had trouble keeping up with him and had to track him down.”

“Jacket, did you know they were following you?” He nods.

“And if something had happened while you both were separated, then what?” You look at him, the way he holds himself shifts but not his expression, he looks almost distressed. “I need you to understand how important it is that we work together and we stay together. I’ve already admitted I should’ve listened, I’ve apologized and honestly you guys were right and I should’ve listened. But Jacket that means you need to listen too.”

It’s awkwardly quiet for a moment before Bain starts talking again, “Just a heads up, I may have work for you both in the morning. Also Fox? Thank you for having Joy alert me and managing to get him back in one piece.”

“It wasn’t even my first thought, my first thought was to make sure he’s okay.”

“Yeah, but you thought on your feet, and brought him home in one piece and got a hold of us. You did well.”

“... Thank you.”

“Now go get some rest, both of you. And none of this tomorrow night okay? I’ve had enough of that kind of shit for a lifetime.” 

“Okay.” The two of you leave, you follow Jacket down into the basement, he’s fidgeting with his cassette player the whole way down the stairs. You both get to the door to his room and he looks at you softly for a moment, his expression has finally shifted. He looks worried, scared even, you’ve never seen him like that before.

You pass into his room and he follows you and closes the door, you smile at him but he looks away. You watch him walk over and put the tiger mask back in its place and start swapping the cassette. You sit down as he does and wait for him to come over, on his way he starts to rewind the cassette and you stop him once he gets to you. “I know, I could’ve died if something had gone wrong.” He looks down for a moment then back up at you, “I could’ve lost you too if something had gone wrong. It was an easy choice for me to make to chase after you and try to track you down. Bain is right, we need to be more careful. I like it here, I like these bastards, I-”

You cut yourself off, your heart starts racing, you almost just said you love him. You both look at each other for a moment before you feel a blush creep across your face. Much like the very first time he grabs you and kisses you, you wrap your arms around him. Jacket pulls you back to lay on him while you both kiss, even if it was just for one day making him hurt like that was too much. You eventually pull away and move down a bit to rest your head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat before falling asleep. Everything is going to be okay.


	22. Planning Phase

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You get your information from Bain and prep for the nights mission along with your teammates.

The next morning Jacket wakes you up, you climb off him pretty groggy and out of it and he sits up. You look at him for a moment, rub your eyes and go, “Oh, I should go get cleaned up. We never did that last night did we?” He nods and you both head upstairs to get ready for the day.

You meet back up post shower and change of clothes to get breakfast, he seems in a better mood today and so are you. Post breakfast you both decide to head downstairs and relax, no sign of Joy so she must’ve succeeded at some point while you were both gone last night. You make a mental note to check in on her. You curl up with Jacket on the couch, he has his arm around you and you’re leaning into him. 

You spend the next little while curled up together before you finally break the silence, “So, a while back Joy brought something up I wanted to talk to you about. What if this is just the start and an outer thing with Vauban?” You see him think for a bit and you continue, “Like what if this is just one group he’s hired of a bunch?”

Rewind, click. “We can resolve that problem.” He smiles at you.

“I mean, fair. That’s kinda what I said to her too. Hey, who do you think these gang members are anyway? They have to have some connections to hold that many lives that tightly.”

He tilts his head for a moment, “Unknown.”

“Fair enough.” 

A little later Joy walks in from outside, “Hey! I’m glad you guys are okay.”

“Oh yeah, how did it go? The code?”

“Worked like a charm, we have that whole server and what it was connected to approximately.”

“Approximately?”

“Well they definitely went out of their way to disconnect some stuff but we found a bunch of additional info I don’t think they expected us to get.”

“Sloppy, but I’m glad it worked out. You worked hard for that.” Jacket nods as well.

She sits down on the other couch, “What about you two? I was busy when you both got back.” 

Jacket looks away, “Uh, Jacket needed to blow off some steam. I caught up with him and we hid for a bit until we could get brought back safely.”

“Oh…” She looks a little uncomfortable for a moment and you look up at Jacket and caress his face gently. He looks back at you and smiles softly. For a moment you both stay like that and before he suddenly leans down and kisses you causing you to blush. Mid-kiss you hear Hoxton from the top of the stairs, “Hey! Bain wants you two! Get off each other!” You turn completely red and pull away and Jacket smiles. Click, “Of course.”

You get up and head with him to the office, “Hi Bain.” Your face is still pretty pink at this point. Jacket is standing next to you with his hands in his pockets, he’s assumed his more neutral expression. 

“So, Jacket. I’m going to need you to babysit Fox, y’know your favorite activity.”

He nods in response.

“See, we figured out where Libra is but it’s going to be a big endeavor. We’re going to have two four man teams running this. I’ve already briefed your two teammates, Wolf and Sokol. They’ll show you what they have so far, but the idea is we need you guys coming in from the top. The other team is coming in from the bottom of the building. They’ll be Hoxton, Houston, Chains and Joy. You guys are going to be either kidnapping him and meeting the other team or flushing him down towards them with the intention being to pincer him and take him hostage. Then we’ll either question him on sight or take him to another location we’ll have ready, it all depends on if things go loud or not.”

“Got it. Anything we should know?”

“We know he’s meeting a high profile client late tonight when we’re doing this. This client has ties to a few groups we work with so it’d be in bad faith to kill him, I recommend just tying him up. He’ll understand it’s the price of business. But he can’t get hurt or killed, got it?”

You and Jacket both nod.

“Good, I just want that to be clear since you’re likely the first to meet him. Now get down and go talk with Sokol and Wolf, they have the blueprint of the building and info on how you’re getting in.”

“Alright, we’ll see you later tonight with info.” You smile, your confidence is back for just a moment.

“Stay safe out there you two.”

“We’ll try!” You both leave and head down to the basement, you realize you haven’t seen Rust in a while so on your way down you take a look at the garage but still don’t see him. You give Jacket a worried look and follow him into the basement where you meet Sokol and Wolf in the gun range debating routes. 

“Hey Wolf! Hey Sokol!” You smile and walk over and start looking over the blueprint, you see Jacket out of the corner of your eye. He smiles at Wolf and there’s a click, “Hello, Wolf.”

“Good to see you, been a while since we had anything together.”

Jacket turns to Sokol and gives him a nasty look and there’s a rewind and click, “Sokol.” Jacket then looks over the blueprints and at you expectantly, you take a moment to look at Sokol and he looks very anxious. 

You look at the building layout, “So we’re focusing on the top floors, there seems to be some hard defenses here. I’m going to guess if this goes incidentally loud we’re going to need to get through. Explosives or…?”

Sokol steps in, “Explosives won’t cut it here, the smaller defense doors we can drill, that’s Wolf’s thing. But this big one?” He points at the security door before the office. “We’ll need something bigger and meaner. We might need The Beast.” He looks at you for dramatic effect, you have no idea what he’s talking about and look puzzled. “Big drill, fucks up doors. We’ll need to get it airlifted in parts if we need it so we’ll have it on standby to get dropped off for us.”

“Fair enough, I don’t know much about drills honestly. I’m used to cracking security through codes or lockpicks or just general intel. I watched Bodhi work the drill for a bit at that bank and that’s it. I’ll put that out there as an option, if things go loud.”

The three of them nod and you all start going over the blueprints, the cameras are aggressively placed. You find one good blind spot at glass but from the look of it the cameras are down below on the ground floor. You need to talk to the other team and coordinate the cameras going down to improve both groups' general movements. You look to Sokol and Jacket, “Hey, can you both go ask team A to handle that?” 

Jacket nods and heads out, Sokol follows him quickly. “Hey! Wait up!”

You turn to Wolf in this quiet, “So uh, I heard you saw what happened down here the other day and I’m curious.”

“The fight? Rust started yelling at Jacket, Jacket refused to fight back with him or start anything. Rust got angrier because Jacket wouldn’t even give him that and he threw the first punch. Jacket defended himself, he might not have started that fight but he did end it.”

“Ah, I see.”

“You’re worried about asking him aren’t you?”

“Yeah…” You trail off for a moment then start again, “I’m worried about Rust admittedly too, as much as he’s been an asshole I don’t want him doing anything stupid.”

“He’s fine, he’s just been sulking and focusing on security. It’s how he sulks, he works harder.”

“That’s good.” You look back down and over the plans. “I’ve noticed a problem we may have, the window cameras are rough and the roof has too much patrol for us to go up there unless we’re going loud.”

He nods, “You’re right, there seems to be a small gap here though, we’ll have to go through one at a time but I’m sure we can pull it off.”

“Yeah, we’ll have to dodge between cameras for a bit until they get them down. Taking guards out will be impossible until the cameras are down, we’ll need clear comms throughout the whole mission. Bain will need to get messages between us.”

“Yes, this’ll be very difficult. They’re probably expecting us as from what Dallas brought back their security was only recently upgraded.”

“Oh, interesting. They’re scared, or wanting to trap us considering our last few run-ins with these guys.” You take a look at Dallas and Clover’s report and start flipping through it quickly, “Oh, now that’s good to know. Look here, the code for the door into the office changes every day at midnight. We may have to go loud, it might be our only option. The guards don’t have the codes, only his bodyguards and himself.”

“Oh, that’s not good.”

“No it’s not… What do you say to a helicopter drop and we raid the roof? Strike the fear of god into this man?”

He laughs a little, “Now that sounds like a good time. I know Jacket will be happy to hear that.”

“Of course he would be. We’ll still want them to knock out security so the cops can’t try to tap into the cameras and use it to track us or coordinate.”

“Right, that shouldn’t be too big a deal. We’ll have team A go in stealth first and we’ll come in after they disable cameras. He’ll slam the shutters as soon as team A knock the cameras out so we’ll be able to come down with the beast already.”

“Sounds like a plan, we should bring grenades that deal well with doorways and cutting off exits. From the look of it we’ve got a lot of good narrow doorways to use to keep guards busy with. Assault rifles would be nice for the long hallways.” He nods and at this point you hear the two of them come back.

“Oh, there you two are. How did it go?”

Click, “Fine.”

“Great, they know to knock cameras.”

“Well there’s been a slight change in plans, we’ll need to go in loud. However they should still stop the cameras and go in quiet first. Once the cameras are down we’re going to come in through the roof and the shutters are going to be down by the time we get inside. Then it’s a matter of drilling through to the office.”

Jacket nods.

“So why the change so suddenly?” Sokol says then leans against the wall.

“The keypad for the bosses office is changed at midnight every night and the only people who know the code are inside his office at that time.” As you’re speaking Jacket walks over to you and puts his arms around you from behind, you smile a bit and look up at him and then back to the other two and continue. “It’s just easier to break in the hard way and just have them knock the cameras anyway to flub incoming cops so they can’t use them to coordinate. Plus we can come with The Beast, we also need to pack for the long hallway and narrow doorways. So think assault rifles, grenades great for the small spaces. Just remember to be careful because we’re also in these small spaces.” 

“What’s the thing you’re most worried about?” Sokol asks.

“That this is another trap like last time, they’ve been very elaborate about everything they’ve had, tending to be two steps ahead of us. But I’ve got a feeling this one isn’t a trap, but I’ve never been great with trusting my gut.”

“Fair enough, if it is one we’ll just fight our way out like we always do. We’ve got 8 people this time, it’ll be easier.”

“I sure hope so, I’ll go tell team A this time. You guys start packing a bit so when I get back we can focus on coordination and positioning.”

“You take this really seriously don’t you?”

“I don’t want to get you all killed honestly. See you in a bit.” You head out this time and to the other side of the basement where you know the other team are in Sokol’s gym planning. You come around the corner and spot team A. “Hey Hoxton? Small change of plan, we up top will have to go loud. Think you can go in first silent and clear the cameras? It’ll mean if they take the camera room they can’t use it.”

“No problem, something come up?”

“The only three people who know the bosses room code are in the room itself when we need to assault.”

“Ouch, oh well. We’ll sabotage those cameras so work is easier, we know Bain is going to get us out through the roof so we’ll make our way up as quickly as we can.”

“Thanks! Hopefully this’ll go clean.”

“I sure as fuck hope so.”

You head back down the hallway to find Sokol looking a little nervous but talking to Wolf as they pack and Jacket having an awfully menacing aura. You walk over and touch Jacket’s arm and it changes, he kisses you on the cheek as you come around him and smiles. “Okay, they know the plan. So we’ll be moving The Beast when we land immediately right? Who should carry it?”

They all look at each other, Sokol is the first to answer, “We all have to carry The Beast. It comes in three pieces so we’ll all have some of it on each of us. Not you, you can bring spare stuff to lighten load. Also I’m pretty sure Jacket will kill me if I don’t take the burden off you.”

“... Jacket, you wouldn’t kill Sokol would you?”

Jacket’s menacing aura returns over this question, you take that as a maybe. “Alright, I’ll pack extra supplies then. Sorry you guys have to take the brunt of it then.”

“It’s fine, we’re used to it. You’re still new and you’ve been taking too much break lately.”

“I know, I kinda miss my morning runs honestly. They were fun…” You both laugh at this. You walk over to Jacket, reach up and caress his face and kiss him then head over and start packing things. You guys need to be ready for anything the cops or this gang throw at you, it’s time to strike back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry, I had this done and in proof reading for 2 days because I had an allergic reaction to something and have been in a bit of a Benadryl haze.


	23. Tipping the Scales

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You and your team land on the roof of the building and fight your way through to find Libra.

Night rolls around, you guys get ready to head out and the 8 of you meet up in the central area. For once you spot Rust in his usual place in the garage fiddling around with his bike, you’re relieved admittedly.

You head to Hoxton out of their group and reach a hand out, “Good luck, let’s fuck ‘em up.” He laughs and shakes your hand, “Good luck to you too, let’s show ‘em what happens when they fuck with the payday gang.” You nod and smile then turn to your own team.

“Y’all ready?”, you ask. Jacket nods and Wolf and Sokol agree. “Good, we’ll let them start their infiltration but once the cameras are done we drop in. So I’m guessing helicopter? Never done this before.”

Wolf looks at you, “Don’t get Bile talking please, he will not shut up about something if you do.”

“Don’t listen to him, Bile is friendly! He’ll be taking us, come on. We have to go meet him, we have a place.” Sokol then gestures for you to follow him, you look at Jacket for a moment and he looks at you pretty calmly. You all go with Sokol to get into a vehicle you guys have on hand and already packed up with your stuff, Jacket driving of course, and head off to your destination. 

It takes you only a short bit to arrive at a helicopter platform a little ways away on a smaller airfield. The pilot is sitting outside waiting for you guys already. He hops out of his chair next to the pad and pops the helicopter open for you guys to start loading it and getting in, “Good to see you lot again, Bain already briefed me on the timing. I’ll get you all there safe and sound, he also warned me about the newbie.”

“Yo.” You get your bag up and over your shoulder and watch Jacket sling the two bags over his own shoulder. Jacket smiles at you and you smile back and follow him over. “Good to meet you.” You both shake hands and you hop in with Jacket next to you. You smile at him and he holds his hand out, you take his hand and your fingers interlock. Sokol and Wolf hop in a little bit after and you lift off. You take a deep breath, you’re ready. You want to fight to make things better for the safehouse, and you want revenge, after all nobody fucks with the people you care about.

\--------------------------------------------------------

You guys are on the way, you hear Bain update you. “They’re headed in right now, the blueprints note the camera room so it shouldn’t be too long. Hope you’re all ready for some good old fashioned revenge.”

Sokol responds, “Of course, we’re ready for anything.”

“Good to hear.”

Things go quiet for a bit, you let go of Jacket’s hand and make sure you have everything where you need to be. You look up at Jacket for a moment once you’re done doing one final check and his demeanor has changed, he’s ready to fight.

Comms pick back up, “Cameras down, get in there guys!”

You hear Bile from the front, “Copy that, we’re coming in loud!”

All four of you hear this and get ready, guns out and mask up, you take a deep breath. As he comes in you all fire a few shots out of the helicopter trying to help clear the way for him to get in cleaner. You get a few guards down while he gets you all low enough and you all hop out quickly and he heads off just as quick. The guards start swarming as quickly as they can and you all open fire, clearing the roof pretty quickly and heading towards the stairs. Wolf has point, you and Sokol are next with Jacket at the rear. The door is unlocked of course and you guys head down the roof access stairs and head into the first floor of the building. 

By this point the warning has gone out and the guards are waiting for you at the floor you need to get into. Instead of going in directly Wolf throws a grenade through the doorway, you hear panic for a moment and then the explosion. You all move in as a unit and clear out any stragglers, taking the extra time to shoot anyone down who might not be dead. 

You all move as a group, clearing rooms as you work your way through towards the Security shutters. The hallway is cut off but there’s a point you can drill to crack the lock and pull the security shutters up. Once you get to it Jacket and Sokol make their way back partway down the hallway to greet incoming security and swats. 

You look at Wolf and he starts getting drill parts out, “Okay, watch what I do and do it again when we get through.” You watch him set it into place, prep the drill piece and steady it then start it. “Keep an eye on it, drill pieces can break and it can jam. If it does you’ll have to turn it off, fix it and turn it back on again.”

“Okay, I’m going to guess everyone knows how to do this?”

“Of course, it’s standard for just in case.” You nod and look ahead and see both Sokol and Jacket open fire on the doorway quickly. The drill looks to have some time left on it when you hear a crash of breaking glass. You and Wolf head towards the sound and find a room full of swats who have just made their way in and open fire on them quickly dispatching them. You take a look down the hallway and see Jacket take a baseball bat to a guy who had managed to get through the doorway while Sokol keeps the rest at bay. Wolf is now checking other rooms and you start to do the same. 

You and Wolf are handling the ones coming in via the windows fairly well when you hear a grinding sound and run back for the drill. You turn it off, switch pieces and set it back up making sure to secure it in place and let it go again. You hear footsteps in a room they’d already tried to move through before and peek in opening fire at them. Most of them go down but one bolts through towards you, you pull your knife and stab him in the neck dropping him and look down the hall. Wolf is still doing rounds between rooms when you watch Jacket throw a molotov into the doorway in front of he and Sokol and he starts moving to check rooms too. 

They’re sending in as much as they can muster and the whole team is spread all around the hallway at this point when you hear someone come through the window. You turn to look only for a shotgun blast to nearly miss you and you duck by the doorway. You look down the hallway and see Jacket looking at you as a man in thick heavy armor comes out and you see him start running towards you. You turn back up at him and fire into him as he goes to take aim at you, you stop firing and start running away from him. You pass Jacket as the next shotgun blast misses you and Jacket’s bat connects with his face plate. Wolf has caught up to what’s going on by this point and he fires through the plate hole killing him.

“What the fuck was that?”

Click, “Dozer, please aim at the head.”

Wolf nods, “Yeah, break the faceplate and aim for the face. Back of the head won’t work either.”

“Got it! Good to know. Wolf! Go back and support Sokol.” Wolf nods and you turn to Jacket, “Help me clear more, we’ve got to keep them from coming in behind those two.” Jacket nods and you both continue clearing. Every time they come through windows you both clear them out as quickly as possible until you guys finally hear the drill break through. You and Wolf both come over and Jacket takes Wolf’s place with Sokol. You both stop and pull the drill away and pull up the security shutter, moving through to the second one where he lets you do it. You put on a fresh drill piece, set it up, steady it and start it again. 

You also now have more doors to keep an eye on though, so it’s back to watching rooms and keeping them from overwhelming your team. You and Wolf do a few rounds before you have Wolf swap out for Sokol. He nods at you after you make the call and he asks, “How’s it going so far? She give you many problems?”

“Not so far, more trouble from the swats. They just don’t know when to quit do they?”

“Eh, you get used to it. From what I heard you called us an unstoppable force, no?”

You laugh a bit, “Yeah no, that is what I called you guys.”

“Hey, if you stay around after you might find out more about why we’re called that.” Sokol leans into a doorway and clears the room with a spray. You clear an empty room and continue on your course down towards the drill again. After a few more rooms you hear the drill jam, you head over and repair it then start clearing again. Only a few rooms later you hear it jam again, this time Sokol is already at that end and you hear him, “No worries! I got this!” He starts working on the drill, you start clearing a little faster to keep up with Sokol being busy.

You hear the drill get moving when you see someone drop down the vent behind Jacket and Wolf and open fire on him before he can even assess his situation. It was another spec-ops, just like at the bank. Sokol catches back up, “Shit, they’re coming down hard. You okay?”

“Yeah, no. I’ve had a run in with one of these fuckers already.”

“Good, so you know what to do. We call ‘em cloakers!”

“Okay, good to know. Wolf, help Sokol clear. I’m going to help keep an eye on the doorway.” Wolf nods and you take his place with Jacket.

“You doing okay?”

“Of course. I’m having a great time.” You both unload on a group as they come up the stairway and start reloading, you turn and check on the hallway and see the drill nearing completion. 

“Jacket, get ready to move. The drill is almost done.” He looks to you and nods. You both get up, he throws a molotov into the stairwell to cover you guys as you move back down the hallway. You hear the drill stop, Wolf takes it apart quickly and the second shutter lifts revealing a big thick metal security door in front of an office. Wolf and Sokol start setting up as you guys work down the hallway, enemies start moving in from the doorways and the two of you unload down the hallway. It’s all a straight shot so it’s hard to miss your marks, you both continue down and start reloading. Wolf gets the base set up pretty quickly and moves in to start providing cover fire. You finish reloading and join Wolf in providing cover as Sokol and Jacket work their sections of the drill out. 

You finally hear, “The drill is ready!” and Sokol starts it. It’s loud as hell but it probably has to be in order to drill through a door this thick. The four of you start sweeping the hallway again, going door to door and clearing the swats as they come in. You see guys with riot shields start bunching up at the end of the hallway and hear Sokol yell out, “GRENADE!” and it flies past you and into the group. The explosion is heavy and shakes the floor a little but they all get thrown around. While down and still recovering you all take them out. 

As you’re going back and forth clearing zones and checking in on everyone you hear the drill stop, you head over and Wolf is already there. You watch him stop the drill and pull the piece out, or what’s left of it. It sheared apart against the door however you can see the damage it’s already done, he replaces the bit with a new one and sets it back up then starts it going again. “The drill bits are diamond but even they need to be replaced from time to time, especially against good sturdy security doors like these. Similar procedure just on a larger scale so it takes a little longer, stay safe.” He pats you on the shoulder and runs down the hallway to meet Sokol and help him clearing near the stairs.

You look to Jacket and you see him duck out of the doorway and start reloading quickly, you meet him at the doorway and hear a click, “Dozer.” You nod and the two of you lean through the doorway and unload on him taking him down quickly. 

“Man we must’ve pissed them off today, they weren’t even this bad back at the bank.” Jacket nods in response as you both begin to move down the hallway. A little bit passes, another drill piece breaks. You head over this time, stop it, pull out what’s left of the drill piece and replace it. It’s all pretty cut and dry and a lot easier than you thought it’d be. Reposition, brace it, start it back up. Sokol nods at you after you get up this time before he and Wolf gun down a cloaker. 

After a while you all hear the drill break through and you all move in unison, clearing the hallway as it fills in a little behind you guys. Sokol and Jacket take to the door while you and Wolf provide cover fire. As you listen to the two of them work on the door you yell out over everything, “Hey! Remember not to kill the client you two!”

Sokol responds, “I know, yes. Thank you for the reminder!” and you hear the two of them open fire as the door opens then move in. You and Wolf move in behind them as the hallway fills with swat.

You turn and survey the room, the guards are dead and there is a bald man in a business suit on the ground covering his head. The other, with short black hair and a beard and moustache calmly seated at his desk as if he was expecting us.

You look at the man at the desk, “Libra, I presume?”

The man sighs, “I figured you would at least try to be quieter about this.”

You look down at the man on the floor, at this point he’s shaking and you zip-tie him, “Sorry buddy, you know how it is. Business.” Jacket picks him up and moves him into the corner of the room and out of the way, as you both take care of him Sokol zip-ties Libra behind the desk.

“Anybody need extra ammo?”, you ask as you crack your bag open.

“Gladly!”, you hear from Sokol as he and the others come over. You pass out spare ammo, start checking for wounds. There’s a few grazes here and there but nothing too bad thankfully, You quickly patch up who you can as you all take turns watching the door.

“Now we just have to wait for the other team.”, Wolf says.

“Yup, it’s a hold out state right now. Just gotta last until they get through the barriers, how are you all holding up in general?”

Wolf is first to respond with a chuckle, “Fine, just not used to having to carry someone.”

Sokol laughs, “That’s not a nice way to talk to the person I’ve been training. They’ve been doing fine in training, this is just something they need to get used to, right?” You nod in response and turn to Jacket.

Click, “I’m having a great time.” You know he can’t see it, but you can’t help but smile at him. 

You take a deep breath and listen in. You hear the gun fire in the hallway outside and coming from the doorway, between bursts of fire the movement outside. Then you realize you hear something from in the room, you hop over the desk quickly. Jacket turns and watches, you hear the thunk as Libra drops the knife on the floor and you steady the gun at his head. “Don’t you fucking move! One of you come back over here and zip-tie him again, also pat him down.” Jacket obliges and zip-ties him again then gives him a pat down and pulls a few knives off him. You pick up the knife on the ground and examine it, it’s just a small knife meant for concealment and seeing the others Jacket removed those are similar. 

“Nice catch, Fox.” Sokol says.

“Thanks, let’s swap really quick.” Wolf and Sokol nod at you as you and Jacket take their place at the doorway between swat movements. For a moment you look over at the client and he’s no longer shaking, he’s very calm now, at least you don’t have to worry about him too.

You finally hear the shutter next to the door pop open and sure enough you’re met by Team B who help you clear out the hallway.

You head over to Hoxton, “Hey, we’ve got him secured. We just need to get to the roof I take it?”

Hoxton nods, “Don’t want to deal with that bloody armored bastard again.”

“Thank fuck, if I ever see that thing again it’ll be too soon.” You take a moment to survey the hallway, “We’ll head back the way you did, less likely to be crawling with tons of ‘em. Come on guys!” You signal for everyone to follow you and they start pushing Libra along, he doesn’t resist thankfully and you guys move smoothly into the hallway. As you guys move Hoxton calls in to Bain, “We’re finally on our way, send Bile. We’re headed to the roof as we speak.”

Bain responds immediately, “Got it! He’s on his way, just hold tight.”

Both your teams get positioned in tandem to keep Libra safe and keep the hallway clear. You, Sokol and Wolf take up the rear, Jacket and Hoxton take the middle point while Houston, Joy and Chains take point. You guys move back through where the second team came from, your group on the rear holding back officers coming through the hallway and now full stairwell zone. You guys reach the stairwell and start to make your way up, moving up the stairs while fending off tons of swats is tough enough but coordinating a hostage up too is much harder. There’s a lot of yelling when to move, when to stop and Libra is finally starting to resist on the stairs. You watch Jacket and Hoxton start pushing him to move him further up the stairs and he’s moving as slowly as he possibly can.

You look back down the stairs and focus on keeping things clear when you hear a yell and you see Libra purposefully pull back and hit Sokol, pushing him down. Wolf catches him and you lay down cover fire so they can recover then look back. Jacket has picked him up by his collar and is holding him near the railing. You yell out over all the noise, “Hey! Just carry him, it’s not worth it.” He turns to you for a moment then nods and puts him over his shoulder and we start moving again. 

As you guys finally make it through the roof doorway Hoxton yells from behind you, “INCOMING!” and you see the grenade pass and hit the doorway blowing out the group coming in after you guys. You’re on the roof, and you guys spread out a bit finally. You and Hoxton stay near Jacket to keep an eye on Libra. You watch Sokol, Wolf, Joy and Houston start moving around the roof while Chains takes care of the doorway on his own.

You’re keeping an ear out for a helicopter as you guys clear the roof and head for the helicopter pad. Sure enough you hear one and look up but find it’s dropping swats, you and Hoxton open fire on them as they attempt to come down but a few make it through. The swat chopper leaves and you guys take position on the helicopter pad. You know you’ll be moving in small groups and the group with Libra has to leave first. You keep an eye out on the various members moving around the roof, and move closer to Jacket. “Hey, are you doing okay?”

Click, “Yes.”

“Good. You and Libra will definitely be first onto the helicopter.” He turns to you for a moment and you look up at him, “Yeah?”

Click, “No.”

“Okay? Well take that up with Bain. He’s choosing who goes where I’m going to guess. Either he or Hoxton.” You see Jacket turn and steady his smg and fire into a few swat who come up the stairs, you join in and clear them out. You finally hear another helicopter and thankfully it’s the one you recognize, Bile. You and Hoxton shout out above everything as best as you can to get everyone to make their way back up and Hoxton looks over everyone.

“Okay. Jacket, you and Libra will be on the first on along with Chains, Joy and Wolf. I want Joy out of danger as quickly as possible and I know Wolf and Chains can help you keep him under control. We’ll stay here and wait things out for the next round, got it?”

Jacket puts Libra down finally and you see him start rewinding his cassette and you speak up, “Jacket, no. Just go with since this is your thing. I’ll be fine, don’t worry. I’ve got these guys.” You gesture at Sokol, Houston and Hoxton and he stops rewinding then turns and stays with the group as Bile pulls in. You and the group staying on the helicopter pad taking out swats as they try to climb up the stairs or the sides.

You look up for a moment and watch him throw Libra into the helicopter and climb in along with Joy, Chains and Wolf. He looks at you and you hear a whurr then click, “Please remember to breathe.”

“Will do!” And you watch them close the door and head up and off, you turn to Hoxton. “Ready to hold out for a while?”

“Done it before, will do it again!” You see him reload and you guys start your hold out. Sokol tosses a molotov at the stairway to keep the stairs clear while you and Hoxton burst fire on people trying to climb up the sides. You hear one loud shot ring out followed by a second right next to you, Houston is counter sniping.

A few minutes pass, Hoxton does a quick check in, “How’s everyone doing right now?”

“Gonna be honest, a little low on ammo Hoxton.”, Houston yells out over the fire.

“Same here, Fox?” Hoxton looks to you at this point.

“Hang on.” You fire a few more rounds into a group on their way up and start passing ammo out. You’re running out though, Bile had better be back soon. The comms pick up, it’s Bain.

“You guys okay up there? He’ll be back soon, don’t worry.”

Houston responds, “Yeah, but he better get here bloody fast. We’re running low on supplies.”

“He’s flying as fast as he can, don’t you worry.”

You hear Houston knock out a few more snipers, you reload and start working out the math on ammo. A Dozer makes his way up the stairs, Hoxton and Sokol easily take care of them and you realize it’s bad.

A little bit longer passes, you guys are keeping up pretty well when you finally hear the chopper, it’s unmistakably Bile. You breathe a sigh of relief as he comes down, Hoxton opens the door and you guys move in quickly while laying down suppressing fire. Once you’re all safely in Hoxton closes the door and Bile takes off quickly. There’s a little jolt but it’s fine, you’re just glad to be out of the way. Bain chimes in as you guys catch your breath.

“We’ve got Libra set up at our location, he tried to put up a bit of a fight when he got there but we have him secured at this point. How are you guys holding up?”

Hoxton is the first to reply, “Just glad to know things went well and this wasn’t for nothing. This was a real pain in the ass.”

Sokol laughs, “You’re telling me! I’m just glad something went right!”

You look down, things are going well but every time this happens something goes bad too. You have to keep on your guard, as much as you would love to celebrate this as easily as they do. Houston shares a worried look with you, you can tell he feels the same. Maybe it’s because you’re both young and haven’t been through the same things as a few other gang members, or maybe it’s because of what happened to you, he and Jacket recently but you can’t help but feel anxious. This isn’t over yet, there’s still time for things to go wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm doing better but for a few days I was dead from Benadryl making me too tired. But I'm baaaaack! :D


	24. In Your Favor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You guys finally have Libra cornered, it's time to hear what he has to say.

When you guys arrive you all head off and downstairs, you’re at a warehouse with offices above just outside the city from the look of it. You start heading downstairs into the building and spot most of the members relaxing in a general area. You’re greeted by Joy first, “Oh thank fuck we’re all okay.”

You smile, “Yeah, no. We’re good, got a little rough out there but we’re good. Where’s Jacket?”

“He’s downstairs, when we got here Libra tried to put up a fight finally and we knocked him out.”

Chains pipes up, “Clocked me pretty good for a business man. I hope you get some good intel out of him and this was worth it.”

You nod, “Same here, I’m going to go down and check on them then.”

You head further down another floor and around a few corners before spotting him, mask still on next to a doorway. You smile at him and move in and hug him, he pulls you in close and holds you tightly. You look up at him and lift his mask and kiss him gently then let it fall back down and pull away. “We need to get ready, he’ll probably be up soon.”

Click, “Of course.” You pull your mask back on and take a deep breath. He becomes more tense, after all you’re on the clock now. You both head in and find a conscious and awfully calm Libra considering his situation, he has a black eye and a few scrapes on his face from when he struggled earlier.

He looks up at you both as Jacket sets up his tape recording equipment, you walk around behind him and make sure he’s secured. Jacket turns to you and he after he finishes and you move around the chair to his front. “So…”

Click, “What do you know?”

“You really wanna know what I know? That Leo is a bastard and just threw me to the wolves.” 

You eye him suspiciously and walk closer to him and pat him down again, you know Jacket has already done it but a second round wouldn’t hurt. “No wire, thrown to the wolves huh? You know we don’t have to kill you.”

“Yeah well, Leo will have me killed anyway so it doesn’t matter either way now does it? If I talk I die by him, if I don’t talk I die by you.”

“That is true, so I guess the question is who do you want to win this war?”

“The wolves.” He cracks a smile at this, “He’s had me trapped in this fucking gang for 20 years. I’ve hated every second of being here, all I needed was a little favor but it’s never that simple is it?”

“So why fight so hard?”

“He promised me he had an out, he fucking lied to me. He said one of you would turn on the others and I’d get my chance.”

You look at Jacket and the two of you exchange a concerned glance. “Keep an eye on him, don’t let him try any shit. I need to get Bain.” Jacket nods and you walk outside and into another room and use comms to contact Bain.

“Hey, can you move us to another channel so nobody can join in?”

“Uh, yeah. What’s up?” You hear the beep right after he finishes speaking, marking a change in frequency.

“Jacket and I are questioning Libra right now, he just let drop Leo expected one of us to turn on the others. I know there isn’t any legitimacy to this claim but I thought you’d want to know before we continue this. It’s possible this is a bluff from Leo and that’s what I’m thinking, but I didn’t want to alarm anyone else.”

“Fuck… okay. Only you and Jacket know right?”

“Yeah, Libra also says he wants to tell us everything he knows.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, he’s been wanting an out from the gang and he’s going to die either way. I’d still take all his intel with a grain of salt though, I’m worried considering the seeming long game our enemies have been willing to play.”

“Yeah no, I get your concern. I’ll look into it but honestly I doubt it’s one of us and it’s entirely a bluff. Press him.” 

“Of course, I’ve left Jacket with him but I trust him and know damn well this guy isn’t even a threat to him.”

“Just be careful and make sure to press him hard, we need everything we can get.”

“Yeah, that won’t be a problem. Just take care and keep an eye on things, I’m worried something bad is going to happen. I’ll contact you again if we get anything interesting.”

“Good.” You turn off comms and make your way back into the room where you see Libra, still sat there and now with an expectant look.

“He say anything new?” Jacket shakes his head and you turn to him. “Do you know who was supposed to betray us?”

“Nope, Leo wouldn’t tell me. He just assured me to be ready to be saved.”

“At what point was he expecting someone to turn?” 

“In the building. Honestly I think he was full of fucking shit because he didn’t tell me about the second team either.” You give Jacket a look and he moves in and there’s a hammer strike into his knee, he yells out in pain, you hold your hand up so Jacket doesn’t move in again and you let him catch his breath. “I’m telling you what I know, you don’t have to be animals about it. Then again considering who I have in front of me maybe you do.”

“I wouldn’t get so cocky considering the situation.” You take a moment and take a deep breath, “How much do you know about us?”

“The payday gang or just you?”

“Everyone.”

“Well, I knew you all were coming and I know who you used to be, Jem.” You take a deep breath and exhale but you can feel a hot anger deep inside. “I also know you know where Gemini are but you don’t know the lie Gemini have. I know who and where Aries are.”

“Oh? So what do we know about Gemini?”

“There’s two of them and they frequent a few preferred clubs they own. But what you don’t know is they’re not twins, they’re friends. They just look alike and it bothers them a lot.”

Your eyes narrow at this, he’s right about what we know but you don’t want to admit that. “Aries is the one who runs the servers by the way, the one you stole? That’s his work. In fact as we speak he’s already preparing for the inevitable, that you’ll come for him.” He looks up at you calmly, you can’t really get a read on him and it’s starting to get to you. You turn to Jacket and he tilts his head for a moment and takes your place.

You take a step away and turn from them both, you feel off like something is wrong. You’re not sure if it’s that he knew your old call sign or if it’s that he’s full of shit. You’re not even sure if he’s telling the truth, you know he’s just messing with you for sure though. You take a deep breath and turn around, calming the anger inside of you for now. You turn back as you hear Jacket’s Cassette, “Where is-Leo?”

Followed quickly by, “I’ve never seen Leo, he won’t ever meet me in person. Perhaps he knew better than to let me in. But wouldn’t you rather know more about your partner there? The one who obviously didn’t tell you their old name? What else have they not told you?” You step in between the two of them and get close to his face.

“Look buddy, this isn’t about me. This is about your fucking gang and what you can tell me about them. You either start talking or this gets a fuck ton worse.” He laughs in your face and you pull your boot knife out and stab it into his already busted knee. He yells out in response as you twist the knife and look at him coldly. “So, let’s try this again. I was nice to you at the start of this.” You put your weight into the knife. “If you keep this up I will turn away and let him do whatever he pleases, so save everyone a lot of trouble and just tell us what we want to know.”

He looks up at you, bleeding from his fresh knife wound and smiles, “You’re sleeping with him huh? I can see why you’re scared of your past catching up to you then.” You look at him and you feel yourself go cold initially then you feel hot before Jacket puts his hand on your shoulder. You close your eyes for a moment, take a deep breath then jerk forward. You pull the knife back out and stab into his thigh once, then twice. He yells out in response and upon pulling the knife out of the second stab you feel Jacket grab your wrist. 

Click, “Fox, please remember to breathe.” You take your deep breath and exhale before you watch Jacket strike past you and strike his unbroken knee and you hear the crack. Libra yells out and Jacket moves forward, “Where is-Leo?”

“I told you, I’ve never seen him. He won’t let me near him but I can tell you where Aries is.”

You’ve regained your composure by this point, “So where is he?”

“His office of course, Aries only deals in tech and has his dumbass held up in a warehouse in the middle of the city. He’s ready for you all, I hope you know that.”

“You thought you were ready for us.”

“I know, and that’s what I’m banking on. He’ll try to knock out any tech or comms you have, be ready with backup communication methods.”

“You know, just a moment ago you really wanted to piss us off.”

“Yeah, I went a little too far. I’ll admit it, I just wanted to have some fun before I die by either of you. It’s at Flint and 8th.”

“Good, I’m glad you’re getting the idea. So, you got anything else to tell us about him?”

“He’s cocky and thinks he’s always 3 steps ahead of everyone else. Be ready for anything, he has connections in a lot of circles. Expect him to try to do what he can to get the cops involved, it might not just be his gang you’re fighting.”

“And Gemini?”

“Well you know how to find them, it’s just a matter of killing them in a crowded club. I guess it just depends on how much you care about civilians. Like I said, there’s two of them but they’re not twins, they just look alike. Got that twinsies friends thing going on.”

He looks you dead in the eyes, “I want you to make sure that when you face Leo, you insure he’s dead. No disappearing act, no chance to survive. Nothing. I want to make sure if I’m fucking dying he absolutely is coming with him. I know I have no space to make demands of you but I want him to suffer too. If I’m going to hell he’s fucking coming with me.”

“I can respect a pyrrhic victory, I’ll be sure to warn the rest of the gang. I mean that, legitimately.”

He nods, “So I’m going to take a guess, now that you have the info you want you’re going to kill me. Cover up your tracks.”

You and Jacket look at each other and Jacket steps forward, you hand him the knife and move back away from Libra. He moves in close and Jacket kills him quickly and quietly, there’s almost a strange coldness in him you haven’t seen quite like this. After he finishes he stands up straight, walks over to you and passes the knife back to you. You take it and put it away and he goes to collect his recording stuff.

\--------------------------------------------------------

You all arrive at the safehouse not long after you’re done, you’ve briefed Hoxton about what you guys figured out and Jacket passes him the tape before the two of you go to get cleaned up. You’re not in a mood to deliver your intel to Bain, you trust Hoxton to do it.

You finish your shower first and head downstairs to Jacket’s room, you know he’s still getting cleaned up so you sit on his couch. You look up at his mask collection, you can’t help but wonder why he has so many of them. The one he used the other night, why did he use it? Why does he favor that chicken mask usually?

You lay back on his couch and stare at the ceiling and close your eyes. You think about how much shit has happened, everything going on. You trust him, you know this so this isn’t a big deal. You can tell him about your old name and part of what happened to you, he’ll understand, right? 

You open your eyes to him standing over him and jump, you didn’t even hear him enter. You sit up and he gestures at you, you scoot over and he leans over the couch and pulls a folder out from behind it then passes it to you and sits next to you. You open it and it’s everything Bain showed you he had on you and more, including your old call sign, your old gangs connections currently and even some things you really didn’t want to talk about.

“You’ve all known for a while haven’t you?” He nods. You feel a little hurt that nobody wanted to mention this to you, but weirdly relieved. But this is all intel Libra had, and more. Much of it is stuff you haven’t even told Bain. You’re pulled away from your thoughts by Jacket taking your hand. He has a concerned look and you put the folder down, he pulls you close and hugs you.

You both hold each other for a good long time before Jacket pulls away, takes the folder and puts it back then pulls a cassette out. This one is older than the others, he hasn’t used it in a while from the look of it. He replaces his current cassette tape with this one and hits play for a moment, only music plays then he stops it and rewinds it for a bit. He stops it and looks at you, you’re admittedly a bit confused before you hear, “Richard.” You’re confused for a moment then you realize, that’s his name.

“Oh! You didn’t have to do that you know, just because you know an older name of mine. I just… Richard.” You smile and move to caress his face, he blushes a little. “Your name is nice. Do you just want me to keep calling you Jacket?” He swaps cassettes and rewinds.

Click, “Yes.” There’s a short fast forward, “Please.”

You smile at him and move closer then kiss him. He pulls away after a moment and you both get into position to sleep together. You’ve both had an exhausting night and from what we know and Bain following through you’ll have many more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you didn't feel like reading my fluff fic I had some commissions and wanted to take time to focus on them. Sorry! But now I'm back to writing for me! >:D


	25. Raid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Following the momentum from taking on Libra the payday gang moves in on Aries' warehouse.

The next morning you both awake to the sound of Joy, “Hey, Bain wants you nerds.” You wake up and look down at Jacket who looks groggy and irritable, you give him a quick kiss and he looks up at you now just sleepy and pleased. You smile back at him and climb off of him then stretch, you watch him sit up, even if things were weird last night it went better than recent memory. You both head up to go and see Bain upstairs, Jacket’s still pretty sleepy so you start.

“Hey Bain, so? How’s that intel?”

“His intel checks out, except I’m wondering why Leo lied to him. He’s the most important part of his entire operation. Libra handled all their money moving, with him dead their money streams stop moving. But we already have eyes on the warehouse downtown, Aries’ warehouse is heavily guarded. We’re still trying to get any vision inside, but we also don’t want him to move so even if we don’t know quite what you’re up against we may want to raid again tonight. I’m not having you go in though, I want you to support.” 

“How so?”

“Helping run comms and do spotting from the outside. We’re going to try to use a small team to stealth. Worst case scenario? We have a second team on back up for it turning loud. That’s the current plan, again I’ll call you in when we get closer to the time. But Jacket? You should stay in here, you’ll be part of the loud team and I’d like to brief you.”

“I’ll see you a little later.” You smile at him and kiss him on the cheek then walk out and head back down to the common area. You sit on the couch next to Joy. You look at what she’s working on and she seems to be coding something but you’re not sure what it is.

“Oh hey, I’m going to guess you’re on spotting today too?” You nod. “Sweet, we’ll be together then tonight.” You continue to watch what she’s working on and she continues, “I’m fiddling with some security shit for the base, you know how it is. Just wanna beef it up a little if we’re facing off against someone who works in tech.” 

“Hell yeah! Crush him even on his own damn turf.”

She laughs, “You seem confident and excited to face off against him. You used to be so exhausted by everything. Something change?”

“No, I just want to fucking get this shit handled. We’d be free from being pinned down in our own fucking safehouse, y’know?” 

“Yeah, it would be nice to have the free time to plan shit we want to do.”

“So how does this all work anyway?”

“Oh! Hang on!” You watch her start from the top and start explaining what she’s doing and you listen intently. The idea is that she’s made pitfalls, and when you’re a hacker you know not to get into them. So in essence it’ll take longer to get into our stuff but if you don’t have the info you need you’ll get lost in a maze of pitfalls that’s harder to navigate.

By the time she’s done explaining the more intricate parts you hear Jacket coming down stairs and smile at him. “Gotta go do planning things?” He nods and walks over to you then kisses you before heading off into the garage. You stretch out and look to Joy, “I hope we can run this whole mission stealth. I’d rather not put us at risk of facing off against that damn tank again.”

“Well, Bain did mention he kinda had a plan for it."

"I hope so, I don't want anyone else to face that thing. One on point shot and it could easily kill everyone in a vehicle."

"Yeah, I heard from Houston about the damage, it was bad. But I trust Bain, he's got this." She smiles at this, you do trust Bain but you're worried.

A few hours pass before you and Joy end up in the office with Bain. There's an initial sigh before Bain speaks, "We couldn't get good inside Intel so we'll be running on our silent to loud plan. You two need to help guide them and spot. I usually have spotters but most of them are out for the night. This whole operation is counting on you both. We'll be moving you ahead of tonight's raid to a building you can watch from. Dallas is your backup and will keep you both safe if something happens. There's two teams, the quiet team with Houston, Wick, Wolf and Clover. The loud team is Sokol, Rust, Jacket and Chains. Our goal is to try to get Intel and then kill him all before leaving the building."

You both nod before he continues, "The big thing is you both will be able to help guide them around the building. We don't have indoor blueprints but we have your ability to read the situation and to call out cops moving in should we move to loud."

Joy nods, "Got it."

"You'll have everything you need when you get there."

You nod, this is a big deal but you can't help but wonder why he couldn't find spotters. That's easy and the pay is usually good, either way this isn't too big a deal and hey it's with someone you like to hang with. 

"I have more detailed files for you both to read up on but I suggest you both nab Dallas and head out. You can read up when you arrive and of course I'll be on deck to answer questions. Got it?"

You both nod and repeat, "Got it."

"Good! Head on out you two and good luck!"

You both head downstairs and meet up with Dallas who quickly gesture for you to follow him. "Come on! We have to move quickly, we don't want them to notice us setting up." You both nod and follow him, you are acutely aware what the stakes are and that you're helping make sure everyone else is okay. It's not just your concern about Jacket's safety, though that is on your mind. It's the knowledge that everyone is in danger and counting on both you and Joy's Intel, it's a lot. You take a deep breath and exhale.

\--------------------------------------------------------

It’s been a few hours, you and Joy have already set up and Dallas is in position. You were pretty quiet because you wanted to focus as you want everything working and right, they’re counting on you three after all. You start flipping cameras quickly just to see what you can see and it’s just general guard movements. They don’t seem to have much set pattern to them either, most likely on purpose. It’s a little comforting to know Aries is that paranoid about you guys, he’s that scared you’re coming for him and he’s damn right to be. 

Joy touches your shoulder to get your attention and you jump a bit, “Oh! Hey, it’s okay it’s just me. We’ve got this, I want you to know that.”

You smile and nod, “Fuck yeah we do, we have him afraid. Have you seen what the guard patterns are like?” You flip through the cameras showing her before you continue, “We’ll have to be super careful as we guide them around the outside of the building to get in. The problem is once they’re in they’re on their own.”

“Yeah, no wireless, he’s smart enough to know to use wired cameras so people can’t tap the signal easily.”

You nod, “I have to wonder why there’s no spotters, it feels suspicious to you too right?”

She nods and goes, “Yeah no, this feels weird as fuck.”

Bain checks in a few minutes later, “You guys ready?”

“Yup.”

“Yeah!”

“Good, because they’re on their way to you.”

The two of you start pulling camera feeds and looking over movements and positions. There’s a few guarding doors of course but most of them are roaming at the moment. You start marking them and calling to each other to make sure you both can sync pretty well, you both seem fine and easily able to go back and forth over camera segments when you spot Houston cutting the fence outside.

“Houston’s on his way in, there’s two men behind the box to your front right. They’re stationary for the time being.”

“Got it.”

Houston beckons Clover over and the two of them quickly dispatch the two guards silently and move their body bags into hiding then signal for the rest to move in.

You hear Joy, “There’s a roaming guard walking the fence perimeter on the other side of the building for now.”

“There is a guard at the side entrance closest to your entry point.”

“There are two guards moving towards the outer corner of the building on the north side.”

In tandem you and Joy easily call out positions of guards, cameras and who is where they need to be. You watch them both slowly move through the outer section dodging camera views and the strangely moving guards. It takes them a bit, they have to weave between outside boxes and work their way around the building but it goes pretty smoothly. 

Finally at last after a few tense minutes you see them head inside, but now you’re running blind and just watching the outside guards. You turn to Joy, “I think we handled that well.” 

“Yeah, hopefully this goes well like last night.”

“Yeah!” You’d put most of last night out of your mind, there’s a small sinking feeling when thinking about last night and how much everyone knows. Dallas is just outside the door to the room you both are in, you want to bring up the file but you also don’t want him to know you know. Not as much as you were worried about was in there but even then how much is hidden? Dallas is a founding member after all, if Bain has more he probably also gave it to them. 

It’s not long before those thoughts are gone though, you spot weird movement on the camera. Stranger than the unpredictable guards even. You saw a vehicle pass by, you head to the window and spot it in an alley just outside of camera range, that damn tank. They know we’re here, you beckon Joy over quietly and point it out and her eyes go wide.

“Shit, Bain!”

“Yeah Joy?”

“We have a problem! That fucking tank is back!”

“Aries knew we were coming which means that tank working with the cops before is absolutely related to Vauban.”

You cut in, “This means he probably knows we have people in there already if the tank moved in after they got in.”

“I know, that’s what I was expecting and ready for. Just give them a little more time, I know it’s hard to sit by knowing that thing is there.”

You and Joy look at each other and respond, “Okay.”

You sit in this room, watching cams and making sure nobody is moving into the building suddenly. Every once in a while you look out the window at the tank that almost killed you and everyone in the getaway van. It’s idling too, they’re ready. 

Comms pick back up causing both you and Joy to jump a bit, it’s Houston. “Things are in place Bain, just tell them to come in when they’re ready.”

You look at Joy, “Wait, I thought this was quiet unless it had to go loud.” 

You both hear the gunfire as the loud team starts taking out guards on the warehouse perimeter left and right. You spot them as they move in to meet the few guards left and easily take them out. You’ve been doing a lot of silent ops lately, it’s a little jarring to see Jacket this way but you could say he was in his element. You’re still a little concerned considering the tank, but it seems to be going well. They quickly move into the building where the gunfire is still audible but nowhere near as loud.

The police radio chatter shifts rapidly to response, that means that Vauban definitely owns that vehicle and it has nothing to do with the cops. But if the cops weren’t upset about it that means he has an in with them too. This is what Bain wanted, information. Not just intel on Leo from Aries but info about Vauban from Aries’ actions and what happens tonight. You just hope whatever plan Bain has for that thing fucking works. It blew a 6 inch wide hole through metal both coming in and leaving, you guys were lucky the one time you faced it.

The comms light up again for a moment, you can hear the havoc going on inside before Houston speaks, “We got him to talk, Leo will be in the pd headquarters in 5 days.” You guys hear a man beg for his life for a moment before there is a single gunshot. You breathe a small sigh of relief, we have intel but this isn’t over yet. 

You check in, “Hey, Bain? What about that plan of yours. It’s still there.”

Bain laughs, “Not for long. Watch the cams.”

You and Joy look at each other confused and watch as Wick comes out of a side entrance, hops the fence and goes out of sight in the direction of the tank but from the back. Not too long after the first few cop cars show up, you both call it out. You watch team B come out to meet the incoming few cops and handily take them out then get into position to hold for a moment. 

More cops arrive, the hold begins all the while you’re wondering what Wick is up to. Cops start moving in from the other side of the building, you guys call it out and the rest of the stealth team move in to help support. They’re not kitted for facing off against massive amounts of cops, but they are able to provide at least some support fire. After a few minutes you see the tank move out of its position and move towards the fence area hitting every cop car and cop in the way before it stops and Wick hops out.

You see he and Houston share a nod as they approach the tank and the two vans they had come into the freshly opened path through the cops. 

You both hear Bain, “And now we have our own tank.” 

The two groups move in, two into the armored car and the rest in the getaway vans before they all speed away. You look at Joy and the two of you start laughing just out of relief.

“Alright, I wasn’t ready for that.”

“You’re telling me. You guys were already pretty scary even when you didn’t have an armored vehicle.” 

Joy then corrects you, “We. We have a fucking tank that can break police sieges. This includes you.”

“I’m not driving it but I wouldn’t be opposed to putting spikes on it to make it nastier.”

Dallas opens the door, “You two ready? We’ll have others come and collect all this shit for us later. I’d rather get you two back to the safehouse. They’ll be too busy with what’s going on out there to bother with us as long as we go now.” You both nod and follow him out.

Back at the Safehouse Joy heads into her van and Dallas goes to relax in the common area but you can’t help but wait by the garage for everyone to get back. You know it’ll probably be fine but you just feel weird sitting inside and waiting. A while passes before the fence is pulled back and they bring the two vans in, sans tank. 

Houston is the first out and you look at him, “Gonna guess the tank is in a safe location?”

“Yup, don’t want it attracting attention here.” 

You see someone climb out from the back of the van, it’s Jacket who walks over to you. You smile at him and he smiles softly at you before he picks you up and you squeak in surprise. “Hey!” He kisses you before putting you back down. “I missed you too, I’m glad you’re back here safe.”

Click, “I’m happy to see you.”

“Did you bring your talking to me tape with you to swap it out before you got home?”

Whir, click, “Yes.” 

You laugh a little, “Go get cleaned up, you’re covered in blood.” He smiles at you before heading off and you head upstairs. You’ve made sure Jacket is okay, and you’re not in a mood to potentially have to talk with Rust so you head into your room. You lay down on your cot, you’re exhausted but everything went great tonight. It seems like things are starting to pick up speed, for better or for worse.


	26. Prep phase

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After some downtime everyone gets ready for the nightclub fight, planning seems to be going well however...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So like, elections... Hurraaaaaaay...
> 
> I've also written a lot and am working on the next chapter. But I have like 2 fics written like smaller ones I just haven't posted. I haven't been dead, I've been productive just quiet. Sorry kids. <3

The next morning you come downstairs, as you step off the bottom step you hear Rust, “Kid, come here. I want to talk to you.” Your heart sinks, what does Rust want? You haven’t talked to him since the other night for a reason and even tried to avoid him last night. You take a deep breath and turn to face him, he’s leaning against one of the metal columns between the garage and the rest of the safehouse. 

You walk over to him and he sighs, “Look, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for the other night. I was angry that you all had run off, I know Bain’s already ripped into you guys hard over this but… We’re a team, I don’t know if you’ve ever been quite like this with a previous gang but we’re all really close here. I didn’t mean what I said though, I was just upset with you all and worried. I don’t actually think you’re the traitor, and you owned up to what happened and accepted you were at fault.”

You’re a little stunned for a moment before you finally answer, “Thank you. I accept your apology, you were right to yell at me to an extent though. It kinda sobered me up a little, but can I confess a concern I have?” His eyes narrow for a moment and he nods before you continue, “I don’t know what it is but I have a bad feeling about the next few days. Something just feels like it’s not right, I dunno it’s like I can feel it in my gut.”

He nods, “I’m going to listen to it, I’ll keep an extra careful eye out for you. To be honest I’ve been having the same feeling too.” You see Rust go to continue only for Hoxton to interrupt.

“Hey, Rust! Help us move the supplies in!” You see him come into the safehouse carrying a big heavy looking box and Rust respondes.

“Coming! Thanks for hearing me out.”

“No problem, stay safe.” He nods and walks over to help Hoxton and a few others move stuff into the base. You decide to head downstairs and over to Jacket’s room where you come in and find him still asleep. You smile and sit down on the floor next to the couch and relax for a little while, it’s just nice to have a sort of quiet start to the day.

\--------------------------------------------------------

A few hours later you and Jacket are up and borrowing the basement gym area with Wick. Since you have some time you asked them both to spar with you, it’s been a bit but it doesn’t take long for you to get back into block patterns and practicing reading movements. 

Both Wick and Jacket are pretty fast, but so are you, dodging around them is very easy for you but you need to meet them head on more. You focus down on the last few sparring rounds on meeting Jacket and Wick’s strikes. It’s rough admittedly, you’re not used to having to brace for them and they do hit you pretty hard. You do end up getting pushed around by the two of them pretty easily but you’re getting the hang of at least stopping the brunt of hits. 

You sit down on the mat at the end of the last round and Jacket sits next to you. Wick looks at you, “You’re getting better, you just need to work up endurance and strength. That’ll come with time, otherwise you’re improving a lot. Keep it up.” He gives you a small smile before heading out and upstairs. He must have something from Bain or be doing a round with Rust or something. You turn to Jacket who smiles at you softly and you lean on him.

“Hey, do you think I’m getting better?”

You hear a rewind then a click, “Yes.”

“I’m glad, but you guys hurt a lot.” You look down at your arms and see the bruises already starting to form before Jacket reaches out and takes your hand. You both sit quietly for a few minutes before you get up and go get something to eat. Mid meal you notice Clover and Hoxton having a small meeting, probably with Bain. You guys only have a few days to move in on the Gemini’s and after that you guys have to take on Leo. That doesn’t even bring up Sagittarius who we haven’t gotten any intel on either, it’s almost like nobody really knows anything about him. You have to wonder if Capricorn was lying about him. 

You feel Jacket’s hand on your shoulder and you turn, he has a concerned expression. You smile at him, "I'm okay, just watching the office a bit. Looks like something's going on in there today. I'd wager tomorrow we raid the Gemini's club."

He gives you a concerned look and you sigh, "I'm worried about Sagittarius, he hasn't come up once between anyone. I trust us facing off against the Gemini's and Leo pretty well but nobody seems to know anything real about Sagittarius. I just have a bad feeling… Rust apologized to me today and I mentioned my bad feeling and he shares it." 

Jacket rewinds his cassette, "I feel the same way."

"We need to be careful then, okay?"

He nods and you two go back to your meal, but you can't help but watch the office. It's a serious discussion, you only hope it has a positive outcome.

By the evening you and Jacket are relaxing in his room playing video games. You're both sat together on the couch playing a classic beat'em up. He's absolutely wrecking shop, this must be one of those games he's played a ton. You're trying to keep up but even you have to admit you're getting carried. By the end of the game he definitely has the most points but that's not the important part, you both had fun together. 

You get up and he hands you his controller, you take it and put it with his NES as you turn it and the tv off. You set an alarm for the morning and come back over and curl up with him on the couch, he wraps his arms around you and holds you close. You close your eyes and press yourself against his chest, you can hear his heartbeat and feel how gentle he is with you. It doesn’t take long for you to fall asleep in his arms.

You and Jacket awake to your alarm, he initially reaches for it ahead of you with a grumpy look on his face before you reach out and turn it off. He looks irritable and you smile and kiss him, Jacket closes his eyes again as you ease off him and the couch leaving him to sleep in. 

You head upstairs and catch Bodhi in the living area, “Hey, wanna help me get some work in?” 

“You bet! Think you’re ready to get back into it Fox?”

“Hell yeah, bring it!”

You do your morning workout with Bodhi which you haven’t done in a while and it kicks your ass admittedly. But you want to get your endurance up and get back into the swing of things.

After your workout you head back inside spotting Sydney and Joy sitting on the couch, Joy is looking over something and Sydney looks confused. You come over and look over their shoulders as Bodhi heads downstairs. You’re curious of course and see Joy looking at a mess of code you can’t make heads or tails of. She looks up at you at that moment, “Hey Fox. I’m doing some clean up on a side project I was working on.”

Sydney is still looking at it but now more seriously and you tap her shoulder, “Hey, you okay?”

“I think I have an idea but I’m not sure what it is. But it’s here… I can feel it.”

You and Joy laugh a little, “So, have you two eaten anything yet?”

“Yeah, had breakfast and now I’m just… thinking.” Sydney tilts her head while Joy scrolls for a moment.

“No, I don’t tend to eat before noon.”

“Want me to get you something when I go upstairs?”

“Sure.” 

\--------------------------------------------------------

You head back downstairs a little later with breakfast for Jacket and at the bottom of the stairs you spot Wick on the phone a little further down the hallway. You don't catch what he's saying but he sounds tense and quiet. You nod at him when you hit the bottom of the stairs and he nods at you as he continues his call. You head over into Jacket's room, where he's cutting audio at his workbench. You tap on his shoulder and he takes his headphones off then turns to you, you watch his neutral expression turn to a gentle smile as he sees you. "Hey, I have breakfast."

There's a fast forward and a click, "Thank you." 

"No problem.", you pass it to him and head over to the couch.

A few hours later you and Jacket are curled up together when you get a ping from Bain, it’s time. Jacket gets up and holds his hand out for you, you don’t need his help but you take it anyway. You both head upstairs and find yourselves meeting with a lot of heisters and Bain of course.

“Okay, so this and the next are going to be big operations. Gemini ramped up security after Aries died, so be ready for anything. We’re going to try to get people moved into position within the club before we go loud so be ready to try to blend in. We’ll be moving in three groups and with the tank out of the way we’ll be using vans for the escape, got it?”

Everyone agrees easily before Bain continues, “So I’m going to assign you guys, we’ve already got our plan, it's just a matter of carrying it out. We chose to run tonight because they’re in Nirvana which has the best layout for us to get an even fight. Hoxton, Rust, Dallas and Sokol, you’ll be the team on the first floor. I’ll go over things in more detail in a minute. Jacket, Wick and Fox I want you three to be the second floor team. We’ll have one team at the door too for meeting incoming cops, that’ll be Chains, Tony and Bodhi.”

You instinctively move closer to Jacket and a moment later Wick comes over to you guys as Bain addresses the first floor team.

“Okay, Team 1 you’re going to be facing off against the Gemini’s. We know their names are Aster and Chrys. The two of them are capable in a fight and favor close quarters, they’re likely to be in the back at the VIP lounge area. We either need to draw them out or get in there as a crew to face them down. They’ll have the advantage if we have to face them in the VIP area, it’s a bottleneck in there. But we’ll have the advantage if they come to face us as we’ll have our second floor team who can hail them with bullets. Speaking of that’s you Team 2, I want you guys to move through the crowd and try to blend in as best as you can. The hope is to move you guys ahead and to scout the location of bouncers and potential guards before we go loud. Plus it’ll give you guys time to set up on the second floor to help Team 1. On the blueprints the upper floor has two tiers so keep that in mind, it’s a lot more like a half second floor and half third floor. Fox, the bulk of your job will be making sure Wick and Jacket can provide their cover fire since they’re both good shots with dmrs.” 

The three of you nod and start looking over the floorplans. “Team 3, you’ll be on the door and greeting incoming cops. A few can get through, that’s expected. But I want you guys to be handling the bulk of the assault so we can face off against them in peace.” You look at Wick as Bain addresses them and their downstairs plans.

“There’s only one staircase to the second floor and one to the third. That’ll be easier to watch of course.”

Wick nods but points to the roof section, “Keep an eye on the skylights, that’ll probably swarm with cops. We’ll need to clear both tiers before we even try to set up, after that you can manage the staircase. The good thing is the staircase is visible from where one of us will likely be set up and we can call out movements.”

You nod and look to Jacket who points at the bar on the second floor before you hear a click, “Cover.” He’s right, that’s good cover to keep you safe while you reload and face off against the stairs. You know you won’t be totally alone, they can definitely hit their shots from across the room if they need to but the bulk of you being at the stairs is to keep them safe and focused on the first floor. 

You tune back into Bain’s briefing at this point, “If we do have to assault the VIP area I want a switch out to happen, specifically I want Chains to swap with Dallas. I want someone willing to take a few more hits in there to help break whatever they do at that bottleneck.” Chains nods and you look around the room, everyone is focusing hard on figuring out the best ways around when Dallas gestures for your group to come over.

You guys head over and Dallas points at the blueprint, “We found something on our floor plan that doesn’t make sense, wanted you guys’ opinion.” You see an elevator not marked on the second floor or mapped to the roof from the look of it. 

Wick looks concerned, “There’s no basement marked, perhaps the basement was built after the blueprints and kept a secret?”

“Always a possibility, we’ll do our best to keep an eye on it. I’ll call out if I spot anything relating to it for you. Hey Bain? Do you have anything?”

“Not that I can see unfortunately, just be careful and keep an eye on it.” You look over the other sections of floor plan but can’t find what it connects to, you know Wick and Jacket will call it out though. It’s a plan that’ll be inevitably loud but hopefully with more people go very smoothly like the last few. After tonight all that’ll be left is Leo, you can’t wait to get your hands on him and you’re sure the sentiment is the same with everyone else.


	27. Bedlam

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The gang takes on the Gemini "twins" on their own turf.

You, Jacket and Wick climb out of the van to look up at a huge nightclub in a central part of the city. You had to dress up a bit, Jacket didn’t change at all and neither did Wick. It turns out a hoodie, jeans and sneakers aren’t in right now, but if you drop the hoodie, change tops and rip the jeans you’re good. At least what you have on is comfortable enough to work in so you’ve got that going for you. The three of you head in through the front after a fake ID check, upon passing into the building you’re met with a far more relaxed nightclub. The center is a dancefloor of course, tiered much like the upper floors but it’s mostly surrounded by cozy seating meant for groups. 

The three of you separate to gather intel, you choosing to hug the wall the stairs are on. There’s some bouncers at the stairs entryway. For a moment you briefly spot Jacket in the crowd before he’s gone again, most likely scouting the VIP entry ways. You mill about the area trying to fit in with the general crowd and listen in on what you can over the loud music but nothing really sticks out for you. A good 10 minutes pass before you work your way back out against the opposite wall and lean against it waiting. This is the meet up point so it shouldn’t be too long before one of them shows up.

Wick is the first to show up at the meeting point, he leans against the wall next to you, drink in hand. “You really shouldn’t separate from Jacket so much, he looks too conspicuous when he doesn’t have something to focus on. They probably already know we’re here.”

“They already probably knew that when we entered, they’re waiting for us to make a move already so they’re looking for us. By the way the stairway bottom floor is guarded and they’re on the lookout, we’ll have some opposition.” He nods.

You watch the crowd for a minute before Jacket finally emerges and you both hug each other and you both hear a quiet click followed by, “Guards.” Then there’s a rewind and second click, “8”

You and Jacket let go of each other and lean against the wall together, you lean against him as well and quietly go, “You got that Wick?”

He nods, you and Jacket look at each other. He leans down and you both kiss quickly as Wick relays the info to Bain. You all hear Bain’s response, “Good, we’ll be moving in soon. There are bathrooms with windows on the opposite side from the stairs. One of you guys head over and unlock one so we can get your equipment to you, after that wait for the signal.” 

Wick nods, “Got it. Fox?”

“Yeah, I can handle that. Warn me if anything weird happens.” They both nod and you make your way to the bathrooms, it’s full as hell but you’re pretty sure nobody’s going to care initially with what you’re doing. You quietly and quickly pick the lock to the bathroom window and slide it open, you lean out and Clover passes you the three bags, they’re really heavy but you manage to keep hold of them. With the bag hand off she whispers, “Good luck” and you go, “Thanks” quietly and nod then head out. You pass Wick and Jacket their bags as the first floor group work their way into the building, you three mask up quickly and make a B-line for the stairs. 

The crowd panics of course, people make for exits and quickly the room becomes chaos. You watch a few of the incoming team start taking hostages for a moment before putting your hard focus on the stairway. You see a few guys come down the stairway and start firing into the crowd, the three of you move to the side into a blind spot as you approach the stairs. Jacket goes to peek around the corner only for bullets to barely miss his head.

Click, “Guards”

Wick at this point pulls the pin on a grenade and throws it into the stairwell. You hear a panic, a few members come downstairs and you guys fire at them readily as the grenade goes off. You guys head upstairs and meet little resistance further up as it had done a fine job clearing people out. Jacket is leading with Wick at the back as you make your way onto the second tier. Jacket clears a few guys at the exit and you spot an awful lot of people up here low and cowering. 

Gun fire erupts downstairs and you can vaguely hear Dallas ordering people around. You look at the people up here and go, “Hey! If you want to stay alive, stay down. I don’t want to shoot anyone I don’t have to tonight.” 

A few gang members lean out from behind the bar, Wick and Jacket quickly pick them before you all make your way to the next staircase. As you’re moving you and Wick spot a few of them peeking down the stairs. Wick is first to say something, “Jacket, Fox. There’s a few guys at the top of the stairs. Be careful as you approach.”

“Got it!” You turn and look at some of the people down on the ground as you guys reach the base of the stairs.

“Hey, don’t worry. Bain doesn’t like us hurting hostages.”

“I’m less worried we’ll hurt the hostages, I’m more worried they’ll hurt the hostages.” You tilt your head towards the stairs.

“You’ve got a point, we’ve got to take them out quickly.” You nod as Jacket bolts up the stairs, baseball bat in hand. You both were too busy with each other to notice him getting it out of his bag. You both hear the two cracks at the top of the stairs and you both go in to follow him. By the time you guys have gotten to the top of the stairs Wick is aiming and Jacket has dipped back down to use them as cover from the hail of bullets. The two guys at the top of the stairs you spotted earlier are laying on the floor, he did a number on them pretty quickly before retreating while taking out one more with a swift shot.

“Hey! Be careful, please.” There’s a pause and he nods, then you look at Wick, “Think you both can hit them from here over the stairs?”

“Yeah, it’ll be tough considering elevation but I think we can do it.”

“Take your time, we still have a bit.” You see the two of them ready carefully and watch them each individually move and shift a little to line up shots. You watch Jacket closely, his breathing slows. There’s a beat before you hear the both of them let out a few shots, popping heads across the floor. 

Jacket jumps up first and leads off the stairs clearing two guys in blind spots, Wick directly after finishing off a few who were behind cover nearby. You stay at the stairway while the two of them clear the rest of the third floor. You watch the staircase from the first floor to the second closely, but thankfully it stays clear. They’re probably still mostly in the VIP area so for now you guys can prep for the fight ahead. You head over and meet back up with the other two, “Good job guys. You two get set up, I’ll head over and get ready at the stairs.” Wick nods and Jacket heads back downstairs with you to set up at the edge of the second floor. You continue back towards the staircase, it has a bend in it so it’s good for potentially slowing enemies. Plus it gives grenades somewhere to sit for a moment and cook.

You drop a bag full of grenades and ammo at your side behind the bar then prepare for the potential enemies. You watch Jacket get into position so he can steady his gun as you guys hear the first push from the cops moving in. Gunfire erupts from downstairs around the main entryway, you see Dallas ordering everyone to move around and watch Sokol and Rust start smashing stuff down below. They’re probably trying to antagonize them…

You look at the space where the elevator should be and nothing seems to have happened so far. The skylight glass shatters and you see a few guys dropping through the now open space, you fire into them and see Jacket and Wick pick a few off as well. You think for a moment about the open bathroom window and open comms, “Hey, watch the bathroom area, the window is still open there and they’re likely to use it as an entry point.”

You hear Dallas respond, “Thanks, I’ve already got Sokol on it.” There’s a crash from down below as you see Sokol push a huge speaker over and start to push it towards the bathroom doors. Wick takes a few shots then opens comms next, “Group heading up the stairs.” You respond with a simple, “Got it!” Your heart rate spikes, you take a deep breath and exhale to calm it and wait. You see the first guy come up and you shoot him, he falls backwards onto the stairway and you peek around the corner and fire into the small group easily handling them. As long as they’re bottlenecked like this it’ll be a cake walk. Another group drops through the skylight, the three of you fire upon them handling them just as quickly as the last one.

You’re reloading when you hear comms light up again from Bodhi, “Front entry is hell right now, think they’re still pissed about the tank?” 

You can’t help but snicker a little at this, but they probably are bitter about the stupid armored car. Chains comes in at this point, “But in all seriousness this is rough, we’re going to ease a few into the center. Can you guys handle them?”

Dallas responds, “Yup, just make sure they don’t disperse too much.”

“Got it.” There’s a beat before you hear the gunfire in the center area pick up again. You see Wick and Jacket take careful shots, probably picking prime targets like those tasers and stuff, fuck those guys. You see another skylight drop and fire at them again, but without the backup so a few get through and land on the second floor with you. You let out a few quick bursts handling most of them before there’s a few shots from Wick and Jacket clearing the last few. 

You start to reload when a smoke grenade lands near you, you duck behind the bar and continue attempting to reload but it’s hard. You’re still not used to this and can’t see what you’re doing, but you hear someone land near you. You finally get the mag in and go to chamber a round when someone grabs you and pulls you out from behind the bar throwing you onto the ground hard. You grab the bolt on your gun before he kicks your hand and the gun flies out of your hands. You go to open comms but he brings one foot down on your arm so you can’t hit the button for the ear piece. Whoever this is you can’t see their face, they’re wearing a mask like the rest of you are. He picks up the gun and pulls the mag out of it then throws them both behind the bar. You watch him pull the pin and drop a second smoke grenade next to you before ripping the ear piece out of your ear and breaking it.

He picks you up by your collar and throws you down the stairs into the bend, a blind spot for everyone with the smoke grenade included. You can’t see him but you can hear him moving towards you, and you know yelling out isn’t going to help. Nobody can hear you over the yelling and gunfire right now. You can barely hear his heavy footsteps over everything as his figure becomes clearer. He towers over you easily, on top of that his mask is painted to resemble a human skull with an ornate arrow carved in it. You reach down and grab your boot knife and get up to rush him, he catches you easily and grabs you by your throat at this point.

“That might work on any stupid gang member but not on me kid.” He takes your knife from you then slams you into the wall hard and lets you drop to the floor. You go to get back up as he steps forward planting his boot on your chest and bringing the knife down into the top of your right shoulder. You yell out in pain as he twists the knife, he pulls it out and then brings it back down into you again. You yell out once more before you see a figure behind him in the smoke, he realizes you’re looking at someone and takes the knife with him as he moves. 

You see the smoke shift as a baseball bat barely misses him, it’s Jacket thankfully. He comes further down the stairs and walks towards the man who is now at the top of the second row of stairs. The two of them stare each other down and you see a difference in Jacket, a coldness you’ve never seen before. Jacket moves in on him quickly, he produces a knife but this time he connects with a kick and the man tumbles down the stairs. They very swiftly move out of sight and you hit comms, “Guys! You have a guest coming down the stairs. Jacket’s on him and he really stands out.” 

You go to follow them before Bain checks in, “Stay on the second floor, we need someone to keep an eye on Wick.”

“But-”

“No! Get back up there and keep an eye on him, Jacket can handle himself.”

You grunt out, “Fine.” As you get up. You can now check yourself and you’re bleeding pretty badly, he missed anything vital thankfully but it hurts like hell. You pick up your gun along the way back up and behind the bar. Once there you pull a first aid kit out of your bag and start patching yourself, pop some pain meds and reload the gun then set up a spare ear piece. “Wick, you doing okay?”

“Yeah, you good? I saw you coming up the stairs a minute ago.”

“Yeah, thankfully we’re between waves.”

“They tend to slow a bit when hostages are involved.”

“That’s good.” You finish reloading, chamber your round and get ready. You hear footsteps in the stairway and peek around the corner to see Jacket. He’s covered in blood but you’re pretty sure it’s not his considering he seems okay. “You alright?” He looks at you for a moment then nods and you hear the rewind.

Click, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, he got me good though.” You gesture at the bandaged shoulder and he looks you over for a moment. “Hey, go get back into position, they’ll be coming back.” He nods but pauses before standing up and walking back towards his position nearby, you radio downstairs. “What happened down there?” 

“We’re not sure, we lost him in the last bit of that cop wave. He could be anywhere, keep an eye out.”

“You guys know what to do.” You direct this at Wick and Jacket then ready for the next wave. 

Jacket takes aim but you can tell he’s looking out for that guy more than readying to pick off cops, to be honest you hope he spots him before he goes for someone else. You take a deep breath and exhale, you hear the first group moving in on the ground floor and the gunfire pick back up. You see a group just barely at the skylight and as they go to zip down you let out a solid burst, most of them don’t make it to the ground. 

You take care checking the stairway every once in a while but it stays quiet for a bit. Finally you see a group of shields working their way up. You reach into the bag and pull out a grenade and pull the pin then toss it down the stairs, they start to try to cycle back out only for you to take shelter at the corner and hear the yells and explosion below. 

The cycle continues of clearing the stairs and watching the skylights and is finally only broken by the wave coming to an end. You breathe a sigh of relief when you hear, “We’re ready here Bain.” out of Clover via comms. Then Bain responding, “Good, get moving.” You all hear a loud explosion, short crashing noise and the building shakes just a little. Bain turns comms back on, “You guys need to move into position over the doorways, they’ll be running out any second now.”

You get up and head over to the railing on the second floor and see the first floor group move into position to cover the doorways to the VIP lounge. Sure enough a ton of gang members come running out of the two doorways and quickly get handled by everyone. The comms pick up once more with Bain, “Sorry I didn’t tell you guys, since we already know someone’s listening in on us I had to keep our plan to get them out of there quiet.”

Chains follows through, “Not a problem, do you want me to rotate now?”

“Yup, tag out guys.”

The tag out happens, you see Dallas disappear into the front area and Chains take his place on the doorway watch. It’s quiet at this point and you can hear gunfire from the back VIP area before a small explosion and yelling then you see a blonde woman with her hair braided back wearing a suit bolt out from the back. She’s bleeding a bit and covered in blood, you watch her hop across a table as she makes a break for it. She passes Sokol on one side and you see him bolt after her, right after that you look back to the door and see Clover dragging behind her a beaten up blonde woman also in a suit. She drops her on the floor after they get in and you see Sydney come out from behind her. 

You hear a tirade of angry Russian and see the first woman and Sokol struggling with each other as Rust crouches down to the side of the injured woman. Chains goes to help with Sokol only for the fight to change and her to slam Sokol’s face into the floor then take his pistol and point it at him. She has Sokol, because he ran off on his own.

She’s making demands, obviously, but she’s too far away for you to hear her. You watch Jacket take aim and Wick reposition to try to take aim as well. You get a bad feeling and grab your bag then head down stairs, as you reach the bottom you see them disappear into the mystery elevator against the opposite wall. Son of a bitch…

You bolt across the room, passing the unconscious woman, Rust and everyone else and head over to the elevator. You can vaguely hear Chains filling Bain in on what just happened as you hop the bar area there and start shuffling around it. You quickly find a section that slides aside easily and reveals a keypad, Rust approaches you and you see Wick and Jacket catch up not too long after as well. You pull out a spare hacking device and unscrew the keypad quickly to plug it in.

Rust is the first to speak, “How long do you think it’ll take?”

“I don’t know, probably a minute.”

“I don’t know if we have a minute.”

“Well what other option do we have? We can’t just let them HAVE Sokol!”

Wick looks at Rust then to you, “They have a point.”

“I know they do, and I don’t fucking like it.” 

Jacket puts his hand on your shoulder as Chains approaches.

“What are you guys doing?”

Rust turns to him, “What does it look like? We’re trying to get Sokol back.”

“We don’t have time for that, we can negotiate to get him back later.”

“Or they’ll kill him!”

Wick pipes up at this point, “So far all these guys have wanted is us dead. They were more than willing to kill Fox and Jacket. If we don’t go now we might lose him for good.”

Chains bites his lip, “Did you catch that Bain?”

“Yeah, I did. And I hate to admit it but they’re right.”

“Well we can’t send everyone.”

“So we’ll just send them. Rust, Fox, Jacket and Wick all seem keen to go and they’re 4 against one. The odds are good, plus they’re smart enough to navigate whatever might be down there.”

You sigh, “To be fair, we don’t know if wherever they went there are more people. But yes, 4 against 1 is fantastic odds. That’s not the important part though, Wick is right. They seem to want us dead and this might be our only shot at getting him back.”

Chains looks worried but you see him shake his head quickly. “You heard them, let’s get ready to move out! It’s too dangerous for us to wait here for them to get back. Worst case scenario, when they get out of wherever they’re going we get called in fast so just be ready.”

You see everyone start moving towards the back of the club as the door opens and the four of you file in. Dallas’ group passes and gives you all a nod as the doors close and the elevator descends to wherever it’s going. The comms light up for a bit of the ride, “So I was doing some digging really quick and found some older tunnels that run in that area.” Comms starts to crackle a little, “We’re going to lose comms but I think --- know ---- way -- find ----.” Comms finally gives out, but you’re pretty sure you got enough of his message, he should know a way to find you guys.

The elevator reaches its destination, a dark old tunnel system with what looks to be the skeleton of a tram system of some kind. Wick and Rust have tactical flashlights, you have a few you can clip on and do so. You look at Jacket and he sort of just shrugs so you pull a second one out and hand it to him. Rust and Wick take point, Jacket behind you to keep an eye on you as you guys follow the tunnel cautiously.

The air is pretty stale and damp down here, these tunnels look like they haven’t been used for ages. Figures these weirdos with their love of secret societies and symbols would have access to a stupid secret tunnel system. You guys hear a yell echo through the tunnel and pick up the pace only for the next sound to be a gunshot. None of you even stop to look at each other, you all start running. You guys spot a door nearby, an access way in the tunnel from the look of it and blood on the door knob.

Rust takes the lead at this point and you guys head in, there’s a stairway immediately to your right to a second level in the room in front of you. The second level is obscured by pipes but you all can make out three people, two of them are on the floor. Wick moves ahead of you and you hear Russian being exchanged by both men, Sokol is still alive at least. You and Jacket take up the rear as you hear the russian out of one of them pick up in speed and the other get frustrated. You see the standing person’s shoes and nothing else but you can see him turn to the other person who you can barely make out to be Sokol. 

The standing man is getting angrier and from the sound of it shorter with him, he asks a question. Sokol doesn’t respond, at this point you all hear him cock a gun and Wick quickly hops a section of pipes. You three hear 2 gun shots followed by Sokol yelling and a barely audible grunt out of Wick as Rust runs up the stairs to catch up, you and Jacket are pretty quick to follow. Wick is laying over Sokol as he swears up a storm when you hear the slam of a nearby door. Rust cracks his bag for a medkit while Wick yells out, “WE’LL TAKE CARE OF SOKOL, CATCH HIM!” 

You and Jacket bolt through the door and run down a section of newer tunnel from the look of it. This section is lit however unlike the other but lacks tracks. You guys can barely see ahead of you the man who assaulted you earlier during the raid. Jacket picks up speed and bolts easily past you and gains on him pretty quickly. The man looks back for a moment but that was his mistake, he slows down just for that split second and it’s enough for Jacket to tackle him. The two of them immediately start brawling, kicks and punches get exchanged rapidly. You catch up but don’t dare get too close because you’d become a liability, however you ready to shoot if you have to when you see a momentary flash of metal. It’s your boot knife, he catches Jacket’s left arm and slashes down it leaving a nasty gash then manages for a moment to kick him off. Jacket moves in again only for the man to drop a flashbang leaving you both blinded. When you both get your vision back he’s long gone, but the damage is done.

You look at Jacket’s injury really quickly then gesture for him to follow you as you both head back over to the lit room where you found Sokol. When you enter Wick is treating the few wounds Sokol got and Rust is pacing, he only stops to face the two of you.

You initially turn to Jacket, “Sit down, I’ll take care of it.”

“Well?”

“He got away…” You take out a first aid kit and start patching Jacket up, the knife wound isn’t too deep but you’ll definitely be giving him a few stitches in a couple spots. It runs the length from the elbow to the side of his hand and it looks like it hurts.

“Son of a bitch!” He punches one of the pipes causing a ringing sound.

“This wasn’t about getting him, it was about making sure Sokol didn’t die. Which I’m glad we got here when we did.” You hadn’t really had a chance to look but laying on the ground is the second Gemini, a single bullet to the head from the look of it. Sokol on the other hand has a nasty leg wound, but it looks calculated, it missed anything vital.

“Yeah… Fucking bastard.”

“He’s probably Sagittarius, we didn’t know anything about him that was concrete so it only makes sense. Wick, how are you doing?”

Wick turns to you, “Oh, right. You’ve never seen me take a bullet. I’ll be good, bruised pretty bad but it’ll be fine.”

“And Sokol?”

“I’ve been through worse on ice, just some bumps and bruises.”

Wick looks back to Sokol, “And a bullet, looks like they wanted intel from you though. Neither of those shots were to lethal areas.”

“Yeah, don’t know why. I don’t know shit about Bain or how anything in our gang works.”

“They’re looking for Bain?”

Rust cuts in, “We already know they want us, Bain is in charge after all.”

Wick finishes bandaging Sokol up for the time being, “Yeah, but most people don’t know who Bain is. Hell we don’t know Bain’s real identity and we work for him.”

You hadn’t really thought about that, you feel Jacket wince for a moment as you finish cleaning and start the stitches. After you get started he seems to calm down a bit, he relaxes a touch and you can hear him breathing carefully to try not to fuck anything up. It stays quiet for a bit before you finally say something, “There’s more tunnel through the door, it looks to be newer and it’s got some actual lights. It might tie into the metro system. We might find a way out there and contact Bain.”

You hear Rust sigh, “Yeah, think you’ll be able to walk Sokol?”

“Of course! Never been better.”

Wick turns to Rust, “No, I’ll help him though.” At this point he says something in Russian and it gets a chuckle out of Sokol, at least he’s taking the bullet well. You finish patching Jacket up and get the last bandage on him. You look at his blazer sleeve which is now torn from the wound, you can’t help feeling a bit bad since it was your knife.

“You gonna be okay?”

Whur and click, “Yes.”

“Do you mean that?”

Whur, click, “Yes.”

“Good.” You pat his good shoulder and stand up offering him your left hand which he takes.

Rust looks everyone over, “Man, we’re worse for wear.”

You nod and hear Sokol pat himself down quickly, “Damn it, I hadn’t noticed. That fucker took my pistol.”

You turn to him, “Yeah, he took my knife. Little sad, I’ve had that bastard for a while. Oh well, we should get going.”

Wick takes one of Sokol’s arms up over his shoulder and he helps support him, lifting him up. “Come on, don’t put weight on the bad side.”

“I know, I’ve had plenty of leg injuries!”

“Yeah, but even I sometimes forget. Let’s get moving before something worse happens.”

Rust nods and takes the lead at this point while you start fiddling with comms as you all make your way down the newer tunnels. It’s a good while before you guys find a closed off platform and the start area of some rails, this must be a new section they’re working on. You guys get up onto the unfinished platform area and you make your way up a bit further before comms turns back on. 

“Bain?”

“Thank god, where are you guys?”

“A newer section of the metro system from the look of it. We’re at an unfinished platform.”

“Then I know exactly where you guys are, I’ll have someone over quickly just hang tight. How is everyone?”

Rust answers at this point, “Sokol took a bullet, so did Wick but he took it in the right spot, both Fox and Jacket have knife wounds. The other Gemini is dead, killed by our mystery assailant from earlier. He’s also the one who did the damage to these 4. Nobody’s bleeding out, but we sure do look like shit.”

“Damn, at least you guys are okay. Did you get the bastard at least?”

“Fuck no, he got away. Honestly, I’m just glad nobody fucking died at this point.”

“Yeah, they should be there any minute. Get up to the surface if you can.”

“On it, move your asses guys!” Everyone starts working their way up the stairs and past the warning signs and other things to deter people from coming down and find yourselves at a van being driven by Houston. You guys climb in, exhausted, bruised, bloody, and a little worried about the fight with Leo coming up. But you’re all alive and that’s what’s important.

\--------------------------------------------------------

You guys make it back to the safehouse, Duke looks Sokol over really quick, “You look like shit, but you’ll be fine, just actually get some rest. Don’t try to start that macho shit with me.”

You hear Sokol say a few things in Russian before Wick responds, “Don’t be rude.”

Jacket gestures at you to follow him and you do, he heads outside to you guys’ usual smoking spot. He hands you a cigarette and you light it quickly and take one long drag off of it, as you exhale you look over and can’t help but see him staring at your shoulder.

“I’m good, it just hurts like hell.”

You see Jacket fiddle with his cassette player for a moment then rewind and play, “Do you need a doctor?”

“I mean, it wouldn’t hurt for Duke or someone else to look it over. I did kinda patch myself up really quickly.”

There’s a lull for just a moment before you say something again, “Sorry about your sleeve, that was my knife. I shouldn’t have lost it to him…”

You see Jacket pause for a moment, there’s a whur and a click, “It’s fine.” You lean against him for a bit, tonight has been rough on all of you. 

A little while passes, you both finish your cigarettes and head back in, Jacket heads downstairs and you flag down Duke. “Hey, can you check my shoulder job? I did it in a bit of a hurry earlier mid-fight.”

“Of course, lemme take a look.” Jacket was right, you needed to get a second opinion. You were super hasty with it and he patches you up right. “Should be good, get plenty of rest. Like you should be doing Sokol!” His voice picks up at the end and you hear loud Russian complaining from the couch nearby.

“Thanks Duke, I’ll get some sleep.” You can’t help but laugh at Sokol’s frustration considering you’ve been in his position as well. You head upstairs and into your little room but decide to ignore the “doctors” orders. You turn your computer on and find a message, it’s from Vauban.

**We are giving you one last chance, to prove that you want to live. We know you’ve talked to Bain extensively, we’ve heard and seen conversations you both have had. If you give us Bain we won’t hurt anyone else. We only want Bain.**

The we stuff is new, but they know Bain as Bain however. They don’t give you a real name, Bain can’t possibly be his real name. For only wanting Bain they sure are willing to kill everyone else to get him. But seeing Sokol in a bad state tonight, thinking back on you, Jacket and Houston’s near death experience… You take a deep breath, you have a message to type.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had this written for like a week and needed to edit it but also I'm in the payday secret santa so y'know. Life be like that, gotta do art AND writing and it's fun but I wish I'd gotten around to posting this sooner. <3


	28. The Raid: Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So I was working on one BIG chapter and discovered my tiny adhd brain can't handle that. So y'know. Parts. :)

It’s morning, planning starts at noon and everyone is already up and milling around. For better or for worse in some cases, there’s a very groggy and exhausted Jacket sat on the couch alongside a similarly tired Sydney, Joy and Rust. However Bodhi, Wick and Duke were all up and active, already talking animatedly about the upcoming fight against Leo. While everyone was taking this seriously there was an excitement in the room. This’d be either the big break or maybe even the face off against Vauban or at the very least they’d get the damn gang off their backs. 

As nice as things are, Rust can’t help but keep an eye on Jacket, he keeps looking around for Fox who’s noticeably missing. Considering Bodhi, Wick and Sokol are all in this area they can’t possibly be working out so more than likely they’re either late getting up or busy somewhere else in the safehouse. After about the fourth or so time Jacket looks up to see if Fox has entered the room without him noticing Rust pats him on the shoulder, “Hey, do you want me to go find them? They’re probably sleeping in after last night.” Jacket nods and Rust gets up, as tired as he is too he knows after last night Jacket needs to rest a little bit at least. 

The first spot the groggy man checks is their room, however it’s empty. His eyes narrow and he makes his way downstairs and finds Fox outside the vault leaning against the wall in the hallway. They haven’t noticed him yet but they look to be deep in thought, staring up at the ceiling. He’s surprised to see them even in a moment like this break their mask, they look worried, even distressed. He approaches them calmly, “Hey, kid?”

Fox jumps, “Oh! Hey, what’s up Rust? Is it time to plan?”

“Not yet, what’s up with you and Jacket? You two are fucking inseparable.”

“I just needed some time to myself, I’m my own person after all.” 

Rust’s surprise turns to concern quickly, “Sure, but we’re all up there worrying about this too”

“Yeah…”

“Hey, kid. It’ll be okay. Once this is all over, life'll go back to normal, hopefully. Or as normal as people like us get to.”

“Yeah…” They look down at this. They’re fidgeting, Rust has never seen them like this. Fox takes a deep breath and holds it for a moment, then exhales through pursed lips. “Yeah, it’ll be okay. We’ll get through this, we’ve gotten this far.”

Rust pats them on the back, “Yeah, now come on up. Jacket’s worried about you.”

“Yeah.” There’s a hesitation in them pulling away from the wall as they go with Rust upstairs. On their way up for a moment he notices them glance at Jacket’s room through the gap. _They’re probably worried about him._

Jacket is sat on the couch and leans his head back to look up, he closes his eyes for a moment before he hears steps coming from the stairs. He opens them and quickly finds Fox’s softly smiling face in front of him. “Good morning.” He smiles at them and they kiss as Fox places their hands on his shoulders. They lean down and rest their chin on his shoulder, he tilts his head towards them. They spend a moment like this before they walk around the couch and sit next to him leaning into him. He places one arm around them and they just relax together for the time being, 

Rust smiles at this point. _Just glad to see the kids relaxing before all hell breaks loose._

\--------------------------------------------------------

A few hours have passed, unlike usual where everyone is grouped in the office the laptop is in the middle of the main safehouse room. Everyone is sat at different places and most of the tables are covered in maps and blueprints. The only table not covered in work is a single coffee table covered in everyone’s drink of choice.

The room falls silent as Bain begins to speak, “We have 2 days to plan a heist for a police station, but instead of heisting valuables we’re either kidnapping or killing someone. I have a base plan and we’ll make alterations based on going back over them. It’s simple, we’ll have two main teams and I’ll have two people helping me out with comms from a distance. Normally I run comms by myself but if the cops know they’re under attack the FBI might break out long range jammers or something to try to cut me off from you guys. By placing someone in a middle point where they can relay information from me who also know the plan really well they can help you out. We have two teams, since entering the police station is a dicey decision we’ll be doing things a little weird. Team A is going to infiltrate a nearby office building connected to the police station via old tunnels running near the two buildings. We’re going to blow a hole into the police station basement, from the blueprints of the tunnels we have and the blueprints of the police station that perfectly lines up with their ammo lockers. Consider it a way to keep you guys supplied for however long this takes. Team B on the other hand will go in aggressively during the period of time before the alarm signal gets to everyone else. With the whole building focusing on the basement invasion it gives you guys great time to move in behind them, cause problems and then potentially get our panicking target as he tries to leave or at least get him hunkered down in one location so he can’t escape easily. The two people helping me on comms will be Joy and Fox.”

Fox and Joy nod at one another with a small smile.

“They’ll be stowed away at a nearby parking garage just in case they try to jam our usual comms. If they do they’ll pipe comms to you via the van and a wired connection. They’re more there to make sure the tech is working correctly and that the van stays safe if anyone finds them.” Fox and Joy head over and take a peek at the basement info where a few others are looking as well.

“Team A will be led by Wolf with Duke, Wick, Dragan, Houston and Clover going through the basement wall. You’ll be carrying explosives with you, keep that in mind while you consider your carrying weight.”

Wolf nods and you see Team A group together and start discussing their paths and routes and how to get into the building best. 

“Team B will be led by both Dallas and Hoxton. The rest of their group will be Jiro, Bonnie, Jacket, Jimmy, Rust, Sydney, Bodhi, Scarface, Sangres and Chains. You’re going to probably face the largest resistance inevitably. The important part of having two leaders here is it means you guys can split and regroup easily, playing flexible is important here since we can't be entirely sure of Leo's security detail until day of."

At this point Team B groups together and is going over their entry zones. 

Fox and Joy sort of huddle together nearby and start talking about good spots to put the van when Bain continues, "Sokol will be out of commission for the time being but we'll have him in a safe location recovering. We already have him there just because I know he won't sit still during the planning session."

Jacket stays towards the outskirts of his group, taking a little focus away from Hoxton and Dallas to listen in on Fox and Joy.

Joy's brow furrows, "You're right, nothing on the streets offers us enough solid cover."

"I'd rather only have to deal with one or two entry points than everywhere. It does make escape a little bit of trouble but y'know."

"Right now us laying low is a good idea, there's a parking garage nearby that we could use."

"It does have a basement level too, lots of cover."

"Plus the building It's connected to we can easily lay a line from. Think you can get that done?"

"Easily, nobody'll notice me setting up. Hey Bain, can I get any info on the building next door so I know where to go?"

Bain responds quickly, “Of course! I’ll get that to you.” 

“Great!” 

He can’t help but watch Fox and Joy closely, it’s good to see them finding their space in the gang as a bit of an on the fly planner. As Fox runs upstairs to go get the printed blueprints, Jacket's attention is taken back by Hoxton.

“Oi! You alright Jacket?”

Click, “Yes.” Rewind, click, “What is the plan?”

“Well, we were thinking of splitting the team in two. There’s one main entry but we can easily disperse throughout the building if we split up a bit. It’ll hopefully help us get to the basement team to re enforce them a little faster. I want you on my team along with Jiro, Tony, Rust and Chains. Our plan is to blow through this one section of the police station to give us a more direct line to the basement. This’ll allow Dallas to put more focus on pressuring Leo and his crew.”

Click, “Good idea.”

“We’ll split off as soon as we get into the building, got it? Keep in mind the FBI might come in behind us so we might want to prepare for a possible fight with Winters.”

Rust nods, “He’s a big pain in the ass but he’s also a push over. We’ll make him push back as soon as he announces himself.”

“Right, as soon as that’s done it’ll be easy to return a group to the front to gun them down.”

\--------------------------------------------------------

At the end of the initial meeting for the day it’s dark, everyone’s been over the plans god knows how many times. They’ll be going back over everything tomorrow with fresh eyes and make any adjustments and refinements, today was all about broad strokes. As everyone is packing things up to have their relaxing space back Rust hears Bain, “Hey, Fox? I want you to take the laptop and head downstairs to the gun range. I wanted to have a private talk with you.”

“Got it, gimme a sec to get this blueprint rolled up.”

“Of course.”

Fox finishes rolling up a few blueprints then grabs the laptop and heads downstairs carefully. Rust looks over at Joy and Clover, who have come to help Joy out with the rest of their areas clean up. Sydney is debating takeout choices with Duke on the other side of the room, and by looking at Jacket he’s already ordering pizza probably for Fox and himself.

Clean up takes a good while due to the sheer amount of info, but as soon as the last bits are away Wick grabs Rust’s shoulder. “Want to go blow off some steam?”

“Yeah, sure. Beats fuckin’ listening to this.” He gestures at Sydney who is now louder and arguing with Hoxton who is being as loudly british as any single human can possibly be.

The two of them head downstairs and spot Fox with the laptop scurrying out of the shooting range. They’d forgotten they were having a meeting with Bain but it was convenient timing anyway. Rust stops them really quickly, “Hey, the meeting go okay?”

“Yeah, of course. It just kinda reminded me of how high the stakes are, y’know?”

“It’ll be fine, in our line of work every stake is high. Want to do some practice shooting with us?”

“No, I think I just need some time to myself.”

Wick nods, “Fair enough, we’re here for you y’know.”

“Yeah, thank you.” They take a deep breath for a second and give a weak smile before running off upstairs, most likely to deposit the laptop into the office.

Wick sighs as they head into the shooting range, “Poor kid is a nervous wreck…”

Rust starts prepping a rifle and putting parts on it, “Well yeah, you read their file. They’ve been trying to avoid this kind of shit and now it’s all come to bite them in the ass.”

“I know, it just feels bad seeing them put through this. Not to mention their only option after all of this might be to join us.” Wick finishes putting a pistol together and loads the mag.

“Yeah I know, I’d rather not have anymore fucking kids running around.” The two men head over and set up targets.

“You know how I feel about Joy, Sydney and Sokol. I don’t like them being in the gang either, they’re too young.”

“I kind of agree with Joy and Sydney, but Sokol is here because he didn’t have much of a choice either. Bain gave him a chance to get himself out of shit.”

“He shouldn’t have been in any trouble in the first place, and I know it’s his fault but he’s too young to know better.”

“You’d know better than anyone, wouldn’t you?” Rust and Wick exchange an uncomfortable look before they both start firing.

\--------------------------------------------------------

Day two of planning starts early, Joy and Fox having the lightest planning take turns looking over other people's concerns to see if they have solutions. Weird doorways, blind spots, the police stations layout has its own dangers. While those are great for entering and catching cops off guard they become a hindrance during the hold out phase. 

Wick offers a solution in careful movement and buddying up. "If we work in teams of at minimum two we have people to cover us."

Dallas nods, "Make sure to check your corners as you come into rooms too, the last thing we need is a cloaker getting the best of you mid wave."

Joy pipes up, "We should designate a kill team for Winters."

"I'll lead whatever that team is, I hate that bastard." Hoxton says, a few hands go up and a four man team of himself, Jacket, Jimmy and Rust are chosen. "It's settled then, we'll drop Winters the moment he shows up then regroup with everyone else."

"Good, don't want him getting or keeping ground, don't want him covering more FBI on their way in." Dallas replies.

The planning continues, people from both groups bouncing back and forth while Bain guides everyone. The plan becoming ever more concrete, however as the day goes on Rust can't help but notice Fox looks worse than the day before. But it doesn't feel right, this isn't normal nerves or they might cling to Jacket more. They're keeping their distance from him, and he’s trying to act aloof as he always does but keeps glancing at them.

"Hey, Bain?"

"Yeah?"

"Can I talk to you in private?"

"Uh, sure. Grab a laptop a-"

"Yeah, gun range. Got it."

Rust picks up the laptop and heads downstairs leaving Sydney and Joy confused while everyone else generally shrugs it off. 

Joy watches him disappear downstairs, "I wonder what that's about."

Sydney looks worried, "Yeah, he's usually all for open information."

"It must be serious then, he's only had that look while working security."

"Yeah…"

\--------------------------------------------------------

Not long after this Bain calls the meeting, Rust is still downstairs. Dallas agrees and directs everyone as they start packing things back in at last. The rest of tonight will be making sure everything everyone needs is where it needs to be.

Tomorrow the payday gang will raid the cops and kidnap or kill Leo.

Fox hurriedly busies themself with cleaning, Jacket goes over to help them. Fox smiles softly, “Thank you.” Jacket smiles back.

Wick, Chains, Wolf and Dallas head downstairs to go take care of getting supplies set up so they can grab and go and be prepped for the morning. As they reach the bottom of the stairs Rust storms out of the gun range, laptop in hand and angry as can be. He shoots Dallas a dirty look before pushing past them and heading upstairs. Wick looks concerned, Wolf is unphased but Dallas sighs and gestures for them to get to work.

Jacket and Fox finish cleaning up and spot the huffy Rust as he heads into the garage to go tinker around. Jacket tilts his head, curious of course before Fox reaches up and pats him on the shoulder, “I don’t know what happened between him and Bain but he just needs some time.” Jacket smiles at them and gestures outside, Fox follows. He produces a pack of cigarettes, unwraps it and offers them the first one. They smile and take it, he gets his and lights both of them. Fox takes a long drag off the cigarette, and exhales then leans against Jacket. He smiles and puts his arm around them.

A few minutes later they head back inside and head downstairs to the basement, they can hear at the end of the hall the rummaging and packing. They both head into Jacket’s room and Fox sits down on the couch. He heads over to set up a game for the two of them, might as well relax before all hell breaks loose tomorrow.

\--------------------------------------------------------

It’s the day of the heist, everyone is tense but excited. It’ll be nice to have this gang off their backs and to be free from the watching and constant fighting. Even if it isn’t Vauban that’ll be one link in the chain down and a step closer to answers. It’ll also be one less variable on their backs.

Rust spots Jacket and Fox for a moment, bags over their shoulders at the stairway. Their foreheads are pressed together and they share a brief kiss before they smile at him and walk off to go meet up with Joy and get the van packed up. As they turn away from him their face changes, they seem to go cold. Rust walks forward and stops Fox before they get to the garage, “Hey, good luck kid.”

They nod, “You too, stay safe.”

He nods back and they head over to Joy. Rust walks towards Jacket and pats him on the shoulder, “Hey, ready for today?”

There’s a pause, click, “I am prepared.”

“Good. Don’t fuck it up.” Jacket smiles in response.

Fox meets up with Joy and takes a momentary breath and takes on a serious expression. Joy is surrounded by tons of tech that needs to get fit into the van they’re using. “Hey, this everything?”

“Yup! Need me to direct you on where things go?” She stands up from where she’s crouched near a pile of wiring.

“Yeah, I’m not even going to begin to pretend to know how all of this works.” They let out a small chuckle and Joy smiles.

“Smart, alright so I need you to move this in the back against the center console, it’s a power supply in case something happens to the van’s power.”

“Got it!” Fox nods and lifts the large console, it’s pretty heavy but it is a big fucking battery so it ought to be. As they move it in Joy puts two boxes on the back of the van floor.

“These are for our actual comms so we can swap freely between the both of us. It’ll give us faster intel.” Fox lifts one of them and sets it up on one side.

“That’s fair.” Fox moves the next one and Joy starts putting up hook ups and cords that Fox begins to move and secure in the back.

It takes a bit but after checks and double checks they have everything packed up. Fox looks over the safehouse and back to Joy. “Want to go and get everything set up?”

“Of course. Come on!.” Joy heads to the driver's seat, Fox hopping into the passenger seat. Joy pulls out and gets let out, they’ve got to get set up ahead of everyone else anyway.


End file.
